Reaffirmation.

First of all, I am fine. Cairo will be fine. The world at large will be fine. It's just at the moment it feels like it's moving in some form of alternative gravity. Like it should be spinning another way. But I promise that I am fine.

I want to understand why something like this happens. Actually, I don't think anyone really could understand it, or want to understand the reasoning behind it. I have stood in that spot, exactly. Walked through it dozens of times. Met friends there, laughed there. I could find it in my sleep. And yesterday, there was an explosion there.

Cairo has never left me feeling unsafe or insecure. I have never equated it with terrorism, and I have worked very hard to make sure others understand my conviction. I want people to understand how beautiful it is here, how breathtaking it is. I want people to understand why I love it. And I do. It is not that Egypt is a perfect place. There are many things, in fact, that are wrong with it. Philip's arrest kind of threw that back into focus, and yesterday's events made it even more clear that this country, the region, the mentality that exists about both of them, need work, but more than that - that they are worth working for.

This only reaffirms the choices I have made. There is work to be done and challenges to be faced. And if not me, who? If not now, when? There has been time enough spent worrying, accusing, and vilifying. There needs to be a step towards understanding, although in reality it is more like several leaps, but its not fifteen kilometers of unpassable desert. It is not the expanse of the Atlantic or the Gulf or the gaps in language and culture. It is only the distance between people.

I bet Carmen Sandiego never had to deal with this...

My heart goes out to my beloved Shanky. The boy challenged himself to travel halfway around the world, Live the Dream, and then experiences something monstrous - a brutal attack. I am simultaneously worried and proud of him - half of my heart wants him home, safe, but the other half wants him to continue living. And I know that these monstrosities are not limited to Kenya, they happen in Atlanta, too.
I experienced something similar (although much milder and less scary I'm sure), and more than anything I wanted to come home. I remember crying, in pain, in an Indian hospital torn between home and continuing the challenge. If I had gone home, I would have been a different person. I would be a different person. So much of that challenge shaped the direction of the rest of my experience (and little did I know, a great deal more of my life as I spent several weeks later in the year in the hospital) - if I had left early, there would have been so much that I would have not known. As terrible as it was, it shaped something spectacular for me.
Knowing the extent of the attack, I was also torn on another decision - whether or not to tell my parents. I crave comforting about the issue - god knows how worried I am about Sean. But on the other side of the coin - would my parents comfort be worth their ultimate worry about my safety in the year to come? Would continue to support my decision to spend the next chapter of my life in what they have labeled a "dangerous place"? Of course, comparing Cairo to Nairobi is a little like comparing tequila and rum - both are exciting, potentially risky, and delicious - just differently. But would they see that? I have the feeling that they would lump together all the places they didn't understand and categorize them under "Places we will not let our daughter go." Their understanding and support in my decision to face that challenge are nearly as important to me as the experience itself, and I know that without them this challenge would be about impossible. I guess it is hard for them to relate, my cravings for international experiences are a little, for lack of a better and less cheesy term, foreign to them. They still expect me to "wise up" one day and put on an engineer's hat, to chicken out, marry, and have those babies that my wide hips were made for, and are still wary of my passion and desire for all things Middle Eastern, challenging, and international. I think that they are proud in some ways, but find it difficult to explain why their daughter is on the other side of the world, why she spends so much time in a student organization they have never heard of, or what the hell her path through life spends so little time on native soil. My new friend faces the same issues convincing her parentals to experience the greatness of the traineeship rocketship. But again, it all comes back to the Dream. And if it comes down to living it or letting it pass by, you better be sure as hell that I am going to be living and breathing all I can of it.

let's try this again...

another surgery tomorrow. let's see if this one is slightly more effective than the last time.


oh, i hate my kidneys.

oh yes.

i am still in the hospital. 

and now i have pneumonia.

the gods of the world plot against me again.

this is starting to sound familiar...

it's 4:00 am. I have been up for about an hour crying in pain, unable to sleep, barely able to move. it's at this point I give up, call my friend Katie, and head into the ER.

by 7:00 am, I have had a huge dose of morphine, my blood pressure drops to 70/40 (which is dangerously low, even compared to my already fairly low blood pressure), and after passing out in the bathroom, i am laying in a CAT scan trying to stay awake long enough to hold my breath for an accurate reading.

by 11:00 am, after I had finally woken up from an almost comatose sleep, I'm told that I have a kidney stone that is large enough to completely block the exit of my right kidney, and infected enough to disable my kidney if left untreated.

so that's it. that is the answer to my feeling shitty. a huge kidney stone, about 1 centimeter in diameter (huge when you think that is about a third of an inch, and the exit path for the kidney is only about 2 centimeters) so infected that it is killing my kidney. the end.

well, not really.

i stay in the hospital for about 36 hours, they are unable to break up my stone because the machine (that is shared between several hospitals in atlanta) is scheduled for another hospital that day. so I go back in to the hospital in a week to get it broken up and removed, which will include anesthesia, and I can only assume, pain.

talk about putting a cramp in my style.

eew.

looking at the bruise on my arm from when they stole four tubes of blood is a painful reminder of the hope that i have for someone being able to figure out what is wrong with me.

tomorrow we will see.

i fail at life.

i have had the hiccups six times today.
and my chest is really starting to hurt.

man, hiccups are a bitch.

Stephen King, take notes.

The scariest moment of my life, Take one: I am sitting in a hospital bed on sheets that haven’t been changed in who knows how long, facing a wall where a cockroach is crawling and the white paint looks grayish-brown under all the dirt. I am screaming and kicking at a nurse who (with ungloved and probably unwashed hands), after dropping the syringe and needle on the disgusting, dirty floor, tries to inject some unidentified antibiotic into my side. All the while, I am burning with 105˚ fever, shaking uncontrollably, and crying from pain and fear. This is when I curse the Indian medical system and probably ended up kicking someone in the face.

The scariest moment of my life, Take two: The moments leading up to the aforementioned fearful point. I sat in my apartment, crying because I can’t control how badly I am shaking from fever. I’m not in a real bed because there are too many people in the house, so I am sleeping in the living room on something that resembles a stretcher. It’s maybe 3 or 4 in the morning, and I can’t breathe. Literally, absolutely unable to breathe. I don’t know what to do, who to call, or if I can even move. Luckily, my roommates were awakened by the sound of my crying and came to my aid. They called my boss, a cab, and took me to the hospital. It turned out I could not stand, walk, or even sit up on my own and was in danger of frying my brain with fever. It was absolutely terrifying.

Luckily, after five hours, I was allowed to leave the sketch hospital and return home. I was admitted later that night to a hospital run by the University of Massachusetts (which happened to be just down the street) for dehydration, but released after several hours. The next day I was readmitted, for good this time, or until I got better anyway. I spent two nights in the hospital, watching the fan spin when the TV didn’t work. I did however catch a Harry Potter marathon on HBO and a special about Pakistan on CNN (the only working English channels they had). I spent a lot of time on the phone with home, at points wishing to go head back to the good ol' US of A, but thankfully not giving in. If I had gone home, I would have regretted it the rest of my life, not to mention missing out on so much I have left to do here in India.

Finally released and better now – I headed home. Final verdict: a kidney infection and kidney stone. At the same time. My body plots against me again. Now, I’ve been healed, and ready for the next adventure.

:'(

i'm sick of migraines.
i feel like crying.
i might just start crying right now.