still very sick

Forgive my recent silence. I am still very sick and spend 90% of my days lying on my hard mattress under the ceiling fan, silently groaning in pain. Yesterday morning I hit a real low. After almost fainting on the street from dehydration on a sunrise search for water, sugar, and salt, I decided I had waited long enough for my beleaguered immune system. It was time for the heavy guns, cipro and tinidazole, pills I have avoided and not been forced to use to the whole time I have been in India. I am feeling a little better today. My toilet's not looking too good, though, because I have no more running water. Who knows when that will come back. Luckily I haven't been able to eat enough to produce much solid waste.

The electricity isn't doing so well, either. The heat has shot up again and the power goes out constantly. This is difficult when I'm in my room or bathroom because there is only a tiny sliver of secondhand sunlight that squeezes through the window from the two and a half foot wide street it opens onto. I just bought new batteries for my flashlight. I am usually glad for the extreme narrowness of my street. The sun in the middle of the day is blinding, even with my dark sunglasses. Outside on the street, the wiry cycle rickshaw guys line up along the wall hoping to catch a fare, but today at 2 p.m most of them were curled and sprawled in all positions on the dark brown pavement underneath their bikes, trying to fit their bodies into the scraps of shade cast down by the tree branches, which stay mercifully motionless in the dead air. A new haze has become stuck over the city, too, much like the ones that get stuck over NYC on its hottest summer days.

I am ready to leave, but I am still not quite well enough. I want to make sure these medicines work first. I have a very heavy load.