I didn't know anybody in America got the Amoebas. One of my stranger dealings with the American medical establishment came on one of my occasional visits there, when I came down with the well-known symptoms. I went to a nearby hospital, told them I was just back from the tropics, had a case of the amoebic trots, and needed a course of metronidazole. They looked at me like I was nuts: "you can't get that around here". I told them that I didn't get it around there, that I knew damned well what it was, and that a simple stool exam would confirm it. They got all uptight about the idea of me telling them what was what; one guy went so far as to imply that I might have blood in the dumps because I'd been up to some odd sexual behaviour. In fact I had, but not that particular one, and at that point I walked out. Fortunately I was visiting relatives, one of whom knew of a pharmacist in the area who had once been a Peace Corps volunteer. Looked him up, told the story, had a good laugh, got the drugs, and that was that.
You never want to sit in at a social occasion with a group of mid-term Peace Corps Volunteers. Intestinal disturbance is often the major topic of conversation, and the uninitiated have a hard time with it. |
