Malaria or Food Poisoning

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Malaria or Food Poisoning
Khon Kaen Thailand Southeast Asia
Monday, November 6, 2006

I am going through a mental process, trying to discover what was drastically wrong with me in Niger. I was extremely sick and am not sure what was wrong.

French

It is French or Hausa speaking, the strange part in life, is you walk into a doctor or pharmacy in a poorer country and they ask,
- What is wrong with you? -

How do I know, I am sick, these are my symptoms….

Now, how does a person who does not understand English and I cannot say in French, understand or intuitively care about my symptoms. I know, and for sure, 100 feel that what is under-developed in countries is care. To be in the worst developed country on the planet, NIGER, and expect a doctor to care, really care is ludicrous. They only care about how much money they can get from a white man.

The solutions though are often easier than the diagnose and I believe a person should concentrate on what will fix them, and not on what is wrong.
90 percent of problems can be serviced with some type of anti-biotic, and if I walk into a pharmacy, describe my symptoms, I have about a 90 percent chance the pharmacist will give me something that works.

This is fuzzy logic, and the need to know is the problem, a person needs to know, I am not sure why, but life demands of them, to know why…

90 percent will not stop the 10 percent.

Life threatening diseases, what are they, hard to find a good one that will take down a healthy person. However, for the paranoid, a private pay through the nose doctor in another country is your best choice, and with an introduction from someone.

The go to a second doctor, just to be sure.

Calling your doctor at home would be wonderful, if you can muster a doctor that will take you calls. Nobody wants to be responsible, so the put-you-off words can be annoying.

Solutions medicine is more important than to know why, better to make a mistake and take the wrong set of medicines, which probably will not hurt you, than to wait, and wait, until you are really sick.

If it does not work, well, so what.

I am ok, did I have malaria or food poisoning or something else, the regiment of how I dealt with it worked, I am fixed. Nevertheless, egg in my face, humility, introspection, what was wrong with me, I need to be careful; I need to have solutions in my brain, anticipate how to deal with problems, before I am in a problem. Anticipation and a game plan on managing problems is good explorer type need. To be able to see into the future and anticipate what problem could possibly arise, then think through the problem, and know a path to a solution.

Not the way a normal person thinks, so stay home.

Malaria or Food Poisoning

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Reader Submitted Comments | Deleted Comments (0)

Anonymous said on Tuesday November 14th, 2006 05:29:00 AM

Hi Andy,Sorry you got so sick. Rather than staying at home, a lot of people could get good information on staying healthy while they travel if they read "Quit Dreaming and Go". It has a whole chapter on travel related illnesses and how to prevent them. You can find it at http://www.quitdreamingandgo.com.