Before coming on this adventure I was forced by my lovely and loving mother to go to the travel doctor for a chat and some needle time. I humor her because to her the thought of me lying on a Brasilian beach sipping caipirinhas or roughing my way through Bolivia is an instant invitation for yellow fever, typhoid, and any other collection of diseases that her nursing background forgets aren't actually contracted just by looking at someone.
At that appointment my doctor, also a very worried older individual, warned me again and again of the rampant bug varieties itching to make their way into a poor blonde girl from Maine. I again humored the poor old guy and heard off-hand his suggestion to get a tuberculosis test when I got back, wondering why I would need that if I'm not traveling to Russia or Middle Ages Europe.
I have to say, I've woken up on more buses than I'd like to admit to the old man behind me hacking up a likely-bloody lung or finding my lunch table snuggled rather close to the table of a thickly-coughing individual.
I'm no doctor, but while there are many diseases I know I haven't contracted, I wouldn't be surprised to find bloody lungs upon my return to the USA or that those bus blankets I grab frantically in the middle of the night have way more in common with the biological warfare strategy the British so kindly introduced to the Native Americans than my own fuzzy blankies back home do.
At least I'm not suffering from the combination of altitude problems and stomach bugs plaguing my parents and sister. I'd rather grab some TB to share on my flight home with whatever cute undergrad I'm seated with, he likely making his return from a one-month backpacking tour of South America, thinking his pre-college meningitis vaccine must cover all manner of possibilities. TB! Everyone's doing it!
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