Some of you may recall my post last summer called Attack of the Tajik Tummy in which I recounted in lady-like detail my first encounter with the vagaries of Tajikistan’s many gastrointestinal flora.  Well, after discussing my symptoms with a travel doctor, apparently, the 25 hours I spent in bed with an insane fever, migrane, inability to retain anything in either end, and a general feeling of death, were actually the result of typhoid.  Hooray, I got an illness that I only knew of because of the many hours spent playing Oregon Trail as a kid!

Suddenly it all made sense.  Typhoid is caused by salmonella, and even though there is a vaccine, the vaccine only prevents 50-80% of cases.  While Wikipedia claims that typhoid has a week-long onset, my doctor was convinced that the severity of the fever and the fact that it cleared up the within a day of me doping myself up on Cipro suggested a strong likelihood of typhoid.

Given that it was typhoid, I probably was a complete idiot for not seeking medical attention.  Then again, I wasn’t particularly interested in paying 200 dollars for a bottle of Pedialyte that I was just going to throw back up.  That being said, I also learned how valuable a multi-dose bottle of ciprofloxacin can be.  It saved me a total of three times in Tajikistan.

The moral of the story: wash your fruit, wash your vegetables, avoid the ground-growing fruit (strawberries), because, in the words of the doctor who gave our health orientation, “all it takes is a speck of poo.”

One small comfort is that I know it could have been worse; at least I didn’t die of dysentery.