The specialist appeared last night and poked and prodded. He seemed competent and thorough, like my primary doctor. We chatted for several minutes, as he explained all the diseases they’d already ruled out; things like malaria, dengue, cystoplasmosis, measles. I was only mildly releived; I was already pretty sure I didn’t have any of these. “We are still waiting on the results of the bile test,” he continued, “But if that comes back negative as I suspect it will, then what you probably have is a self-terminating virus of some sort that is runnung its course.” And there really isn’t a way to treat that, you just have to be patient.

This morning my regular doctor returned, and said basically the same thing. Another option they are now looking at it mononucleosis. “We are still waiting for lab results,” she said, repeating the never-ending mantra, “so we need to keep you for observation until we get those.” Oh no.

“How long will that take?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Some will come in Friday, others tomorrow,” she said. [ death wail inside my soul ] “But we might be able to discharge you tomorrow. We’ll see.” So, yeah, my sentence is now extended. The good news is that I feel a lot better; my fever is low, I am active today, and am eating better. That’s largely Emily’s credit, as she skips out occasionally to bring me back healing foods: yogurt, cream-filled donuts, chocolate milk, Subway sammiches, and (rumor has it, dare I hope?) a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. Honestly, when the refried beans and scrambled eggs with a slice of white bread toast hits the table, all I can do is push it around with a fork. You’ve heard of bad hospital food? Now imagine it’s prepared in a 3rd-world country.

We’ve been away from our village for so long that I have this concern our natives will start to forget who we are, or think that we don’t like them anymore. It’s worse because we are going to be on the road a LOT in March, with two projects, two conferences, the eye guy, and a friend coming from the US for a little traveling. I’d really like to get back home as soon as possible.

The one positive thing about this is that they said I can keep my radiographs. I want to show the lung x-rays to the villagers, to explain what lungs look like and what they do. When we did a charla on the effects of smoking, we discovered that they really don’t have a firm grasp of what a “lung” is. In fact, in Q’anjob’al there isn’t even a word for this body part.