Illness and travel
Those who follow this blog may recognize a trend in my travel writing. Wherever I travel for an extended period of time, I seem to pick an illness or infirmity. Berlin was no different.
But first, I haven't written about my Israel/West Bank trip since my January 4th "Leaving Israel: A Tale of 7 Checkpoints", and people have e-mailed me asking what was the outcome of becoming very ill in Israel/The West Bank, and if I ever recovered. Well, it was a long and painful 2-month recovery filled with numerous trips to hospitals here in Scotland, and routines of heavy antibiotics and anti-parasite drugs, coupled with numerous tests to determine what exactly I contracted while in the Middle East.
In my 9 days in Israel, I somehow became infected with the bacterial infections Campillobacter and giardia, and the parasite Entamoeba histolytica. These three things kept me from digesting meat and dairy for about 2 months, and made things very difficult for me from January-February, 2009. But I feel like I've recovered from that and I'm eating normally, except I feel like I may now be a bit lactose intolerant. I started training again for triathlons in late February, and I competed in a triathlon in April, which was a lot of fun.
So I guess the lesson is to be cautious when eating street food and drinking the water while traveling, even when you're in a developed country, because I was in Israel when I got sick.
But first, I haven't written about my Israel/West Bank trip since my January 4th "Leaving Israel: A Tale of 7 Checkpoints", and people have e-mailed me asking what was the outcome of becoming very ill in Israel/The West Bank, and if I ever recovered. Well, it was a long and painful 2-month recovery filled with numerous trips to hospitals here in Scotland, and routines of heavy antibiotics and anti-parasite drugs, coupled with numerous tests to determine what exactly I contracted while in the Middle East.
In my 9 days in Israel, I somehow became infected with the bacterial infections Campillobacter and giardia, and the parasite Entamoeba histolytica. These three things kept me from digesting meat and dairy for about 2 months, and made things very difficult for me from January-February, 2009. But I feel like I've recovered from that and I'm eating normally, except I feel like I may now be a bit lactose intolerant. I started training again for triathlons in late February, and I competed in a triathlon in April, which was a lot of fun.
So I guess the lesson is to be cautious when eating street food and drinking the water while traveling, even when you're in a developed country, because I was in Israel when I got sick.
