My Intestinal Adventure... read if you DARE

I’m going to skip the first part of this story because it’s not so interesting. Here is the jist: I ate a bad salad at a perfectly nice cafe in Morocco and threw up 15-20 times, even when there was nothing left. I got severely dehydrated because every time I tried to drink water, I threw it up, and my head hurt so much that I thought I was dying.

Here is where we begin. Let me set the scene. It’s 3:30am, and Otmane is telling me that the doctor (at the hospital) wants to give me an IV. I consider this option for a couple seconds, but if you know me at all, you know that I faint when I get injections, and I was (and don’t ask me what the logic of this is) very concerned that if I fainted, I wouldn't wake up. So I took 3 meds instead. One for pain, one to stop vomiting, and something else that was in Arabic so who knows?

When I got home, I slept 6 hours and woke up with a splitting headache and stomach pain. My room contained my entire host family for some unknown reason.

My host mom was tying onions to my feet because apparently I had a ridiculous fever. Yeah. Onions. Apparently onions help relieve cold/flu symptoms so she was tying chunks of them to my feet (with, might I add, the bandages that I used when I hurt my foot at the beach… am I a mess?? For sure). Then Omi pressed icy compresses firmly on my eyes and forehead, and she made me hold ice packs in my hands. I drank some water and fell asleep again.

Unfortunately, my fever did not subside permanently (although the compresses... and onions??... helped temporarily) and my head was throbbing with pain. I did some heavy research but Morocco does NOT have Gatorade or anything remotely similar, and my body needed electrolytes. I was so weak at this point that I couldn't walk by myself or speak very much.

I had contacted my biological parents at home and my dad insisted that I get the IV because it contains electrolytes, so Otmane came back to bring me to the hospital. I was in really bad shape, though, and expressed my extreme fear of dying due to an injection, so my host mom declared that she, too, would be coming. With Otmane and Omi on my side, I knew I wasn't going to die. So off we went.

At the hospital, I got an IV in my left hand. I was sharing a room with an elderly Moroccan woman who was also suffering from food poisoning due to a green salad, which I found very reassuring because I previously thought that my system was just not strong enough to survive in Morocco, and that I'd have to go home early or something tragic like that.

Otmane did paperwork while Omi waited with me, taking my photo, telling me the IV doesn't hurt at all (while occasionally it did), and calling me her cat. She wished other patients good luck and health, and listened as I talked about how much I love my pet pig in the US. Within the hour that the IV was in my hand, I started to perk up, talking more and smiling, and my headache went away. Then I went home and I slept.

Luckily, the vomiting/severe dehydration catastrophe had subsided, but the next day, I still had stomach pains and realized that I hadn't ~gone to the bathroom~ since starting the meds. Over the next couple days, my stomach gradually ballooned and I started to be in more and more pain. I told my host mom, and we tried EVERYTHING.

I chugged beet juice (disgusting), tried multiple laxatives, Omi massaged my stomach (apparently she used to be a pro masseuse?) very aggressively to the point of bruising, I drank coffee, I drank Moroccan stomach-healing tea, and I did an ab workout.

I also -- and this part is the entire point of my post -- was sitting on the toilet when my host mom knocked on the door and asked me to open it. She handed me a craftily hand-molded piece of soap and, in a mix of Darija and French, demanded that I put it up my butt. I cannot express how much of a surprise this was. Don’t get me wrong, though. I had no fear, just questions.

I had tried everything else and was BEYOND desperate, so I did it. I’m not proud, I’m not ashamed. It happened and I think I grew as a person. It didn’t work, of course, but I can safely say that I am who I am today because I put soap up my butt in Morocco without hesitation.

AAAAAAAAAAAAND then I forced 6 prunes down the hatch and I did the damn deed. I pooped. The end!