- why they made my life hell
Written: Dec 03 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: help cure some diseases
Cons: yuck, gross, putooey, erg!
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| kristenulmer's Full Review: leeches |
Stepping out the airport door into the chilly Kathmandu morning air, bags of gear hanging off my arms and waist like fat, swaddled babies, I don't expect to feel much except jet lag. But…why this? Above the desperate shouts of "Taxi? Taxi? Where you go?", a sudden rush of memory stalls my brain and paralyzes my legs where I stand. Choking, I quickly look at the ground and stifle a sob.
Since last visiting Asia in 1988, I'd been telling a gross, entertaining story about the final weeks of that trip. It was reduced in my mind to just that now- a story. But today, as the dust of Nepal reality swirls around my unmoving hiking boots, I remember that it wasn't just a story after all, it was real. And had it turned out any other way, I wouldn't be wearing these hiking boots after all.
I was but 20 years old, and stupid, and caught up in the hard-core Asian travel life: "You slept in hotel- what's wrong with you?- If you were really tough you'd sleep in the bushes!" It was a mindset where acquiring Malaria was deemed romantic, and being dirty and hungry just brought us travelers closer to the realities of Asia.
I was in the fifth month of a solo trip, and lost in my intrigue for poverty and disease. A famous climber named Al Burgess and I had found each other alone and both wanting to trek about the Langtang and Ganga La area. On that trip, we had many experiences together. Al will tell of being lost without food up high and having to eat the first aid kit, or suffering badly from hypothermia, or about the fresh tiger tracks we followed for hours- thinking them yak tracks until a local told us otherwise. He'll also remember the leeches- hundreds of them, the worst he's ever seen in decades of Nepalese living. But I remember something beyond that.
The leeches had been terrible. Eight hours we walked in the rain, in the heavy forest, lost and covered in them, covered.. There were so many squiggling, black bloodsuckers out that day the ground was moving. They looked for a warm body to snatch in passing and too felt heat from above- dripping onto our heads from the tree branches. It was futile to pull one off, for it would immediately attached to one finger and could only be squashed messily away, belly full of fresh blood, onto some tree bark. By then I would have 5 new ones attached to my shoelaces for having stopped so long.
I remember now, that day had been my 21st birthday. On and on we walked, heads down, 100 leeches slurping at a time, humble in our misery, unable to defend ourselves. Every hour or so I'd come unglued, and crash screaming past Al, ripping dozens of now bloated, finger-sized worms off my skin and throwing them into the air like a lunatic. Unfortunately, jerking the barnacles out in such a way left several of their heads still lodged under my skin.
I had vomited at sunset out of disgust. I had too felt weak from loss of blood, but I was tough and merely excited at having such a memorable birthday. It was the preceding week my real troubles began.
Having hiked without a sock on my right foot due to the swelling of 4 infected blisters, perhaps 50 'bites' were specifically on that ankle- as were 3 implanted leech heads. Within 1 day my foot was achy and swollen, by 2 it was turning different colors- yellow, purple, black. By 5 my whole lower leg was like a sausage and I couldn't walk anymore so Al carried me. By 6 we were back in Kathmandu and I had found a huge stick to catapult myself around town.
Looking back, I don't know if it was the fever that made me so complacent, or the pain, or my desire to feel local. But I never considered washing the infection. Once, in the middle of the fourth night while sleeping at a tea shop, I was horribly dehydrated and dazed. I wound up putting far too much iodine in my drinking water. Only for the sake of not wanting to waste, I poured the black water over my throbbing foot hoping to cool it down, I screamed like a cat lit on fire. Had it not been for this one, unplanned washing, my fate would have been far worse.
Back in Kathmandu that first night, around 10 p.m., I was raving mad at Al for not helping me. He had other things on his mind- I forget what, and we've never discussed the incident since. But I found myself alone, in shocking pain, delirious from fever, and crying quietly down an alley way. A young American named David Jointer approached me and asked what's wrong. My leg was hidden under a long sarong and thick wool sock, so I only told him of my problem. He ran to get a doctor.
My first understanding of the severity of the infection came when the doctor lifted my sarong and pulled off the sock. A crowd of 30 had gathered, and the shocked looks and held breaths of the onlookers gave my secret away. The doctor even, had to turn his head to the left and stifle a gag reflex. From my knee down was a bloated, stinking sausage of purple, black and green. Puss came out of vertical splits in my skin and dribbled down my leg, and at my ankle where one leech head had stuck, a black, crusty hole had started to form.
The doctor gave me a shot in the buttocks, and handed me three different strains of antibiotics to take over the next two weeks- 4800 milligrams a day- enough to kill every particle of bacteria in my system (including the good ones.)
Two days later he visited me again and sterilized a Swiss army knife with a lighter. He jabbed the knife into my bulging foot several times and puss shot 5 feet across the room. Oh, that hurt, but not as much as the white globules that formed on the back of my throat from taking so many antibiotics. They too, were like a knife.
A week later, as soon as I could walk a little, David Joiner helped bring me to the airport, the same airport where I stand now, and I flew home.
"Hey sista, what you want?" a small dark boy in rags asks. So, it happened after all. I take a few deep breaths. That was a long time ago. Being uncomfortable and learning from adversity doesn't hold the same lesson it once did, and I smile with warmth at the boy. How strange life is, that to a young girl the amputation of a leg could have represented a rite-of-passage, and might have merely been a spiritual souvenir from a long, lonely trip that offered access to the world and all it's suffering.
Walking toward the street, away from the beggars and desperate taxi drivers, I think with obeisance; "Thank you David."
Kristen Ulmer makes a living as a professional skier, and is also an avid climber, paraglider pilot and adventurer based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. She prefers cats over dogs because they don't drool or eat their own doo-doo.
Recommended:
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kristenulmer
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Member: Kristen Ulmer
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 91 members
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