When you join the Peace Corps, you know that you’re going headfirst into an unknown of knowns. You know that you’ll get sick, but you don’t know when. You know you’ll have an adventure, but you don’t know how or where. You know you’ll have ups and downs, but you don’t know the nature of those challenges. In fact, inasmuch as we have been trained to know how to handle a pretty insane number of wild and wacky situations, many of which are genuinely likely to happen, not knowing if and when they will happen means that, at most times, you still feel completely immersed in the unknown. It’s the fundamental paradox of the Peace Corps.

I spent a lot of August wandering in that wilderness. An adventure fell into my lap the last week of July, when my host family invited me to travel with them from Osh to Karakol by land, including stops at the spectacular Song-Kol and in several other towns along the way, many of which I had been hoping to visit during my two years here (see the photos here). I never expected to be already going down such a path so early, but I gladly embraced its appearance.

Then, when we got ourselves to Bishkek, things were pretty real because of a delay in the visa renewal process. For a few weeks, it looked like the delay might require about half the volunteers to go back to the US temporarily, but luckily everyone got their visas before the renewal deadline and was able to return to their villages and keep on working. The delay was scary, because most of us love it here, and it would break our hearts to have to leave work here that we have only just started. We would all miss our families, our communities, and our counterparts. Now that the visas are here, and so are we, we’re all very grateful that we can get back to work helping our communities.

That week, I got sick. I woke up in the middle of the night (well, I never really got to sleep in the first place) with excruciating pain in my stomach. A few hours into writhing in my bed, I noticed that it had become a sharp, stabbing pain in my lower right abdomen, which is a telltale sign of appendicitis. I called our doctors, and about five hours later a car came to drive me into Bishkek from my training village to go get things checked out. Every bump we hit (and there were many) caused me pain, not to mention the fear of having to undergo an appendectomy in a country without labroscopy (on average, about one volunteer a year undergoes an appendectomy in Kyrgyzstan, without complications, but it’s not the world’s most pleasant experience).

After giving me a massive dose of pain killers and going through tests throughout the day, including an ultrasound, the doctors were able to rule out appendicitis (thankfully), and also despite symptoms supporting a hepatitis diagnosis, we concluded that I was immune to the A and B strains and that I couldn’t have been exposed to the C strain. We came to the conclusion that it was some sort of terrifically bad stomach virus. They let me rest for a night in the city before sending me home again, still with a fever.

But, that night (night 3 with the bug), I noticed stiffness in my spine, and by midnight my entire ribcage had locked itself immobile in horrifically painful muscle spasms. I couldn’t breathe at all, lest the slightest inhalation shatter my entire ribcage, or at least so it felt. Walking to the outhouse, a distance of maybe 50 feet at the most, had me screaming in pain from the force of the spasms, and it woke up my host mother. I immediatelly called the doctor, and after pleading with them to help me sooner than the afternoon, got my host family to drive me into the Peace Corps office again. The distance from the security guard’s office where I had to check in to the doctor’s office in the main building was over 200 feet.

I made it across the courtyard, and into the front door of the office, my breathing short and choppy, but then the spasms came again, and with force. I had made it about 100 feet when my muscles around my ribcage tightened so hard that I had to lean against the wall for support, then my legs gave out, and I fell flat onto my chest in the long central hallway of the office, unable to move, unable to breathe, screaming in the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. I managed to shout “Please help!” in Russian, and thankfully the doctor heard me through the hallways, and came running to help me calm down and breathe.  It was several minutes before my breathing had slowed and my muscles had calmed enough for me to even get myself onto my hands and knees, let alone walk.

She gave me a heavy dose of painkiller and muscle relaxant, and I lay down in her office to rest. For the first time since my first night in pain, thanks to the drugs, I managed to find a position lying down that didn’t hurt. While I was resting, she went to the store and bought me some water, whole grain bread, and honey, and got me some tablets that would help keep my muscles from seizing up again. Oh, and she did all this for me on her day off!

It took almost a week of me resting in a small hotel near the office for all the symptoms to clear up. The spasms settled down after a few days, and it took another two for my stomach to finally calm down from the original virus, and after a few more days to make sure that none of it would come back (and to help me relax and not be as freaked out about going back to the village an hour away and having a recurrence),  Several colleagues came to visit me, and we passed the time by going on short walks, watching movies, and eating copious amounts of Nestle chocolate.  I finally was allowed to go back to my host family’s house 8 days after that first night of abdominal pain. I had missed half of the training I had come to Bishkek to participate in.

Our trainings during August were partially linguistic, and partially technical. Because my office primarily works in Russian, I had asked to take Russian classes, although because there was no teacher for beginning Russian, my friend and I had to study ourselves. Apparently, though, I did something well, because I was able to test to the Novice-High level, even though I only had been well enough to study during 7 days of the 3-week training.  I now have the peculiar problem of being able to say “I am very sorry, but I don’t understand Russian.  Could you please speak to me in Kyrgyz?” so well that many people simply keep on speaking to me in Russian anyway.

I missed a lot of technical training, but what I was able to attend I learned a LOT from. I had to give a local language teaching practicum, and I chose to teach the process of setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound). While I missed an earlier feedback session, it was still very helpful to have a sympathetic audience as I stumbled through trying to explain in Kyrgyz how to make the goals and how to analyze goals we’ve already made. Some of the volunteers who have been here for a year also came to give some great sessions on improving our lesson plans and on the Kyrgyz health system.

Now that I’m back in Osh, I can look back at the month of uncertainty and realize that, really, how much of it was really unexpected? I knew I was bound to get very sick at some point in my service. I knew there was a chance of having some visa stress. I knew I was going to go on an adventure. I just didn’t quite expect it to happen in this order, at this time. But, so goes the Peace Corps; you know everything that’s going to happen, but it still happens when you least expect it, all at once. I think that’s part of why I like this job so much – it’s a Forrest Gump box of chocolates every single day.

Now, if only I could actually afford the chocolate habit I kept up while I was in the hotel…