The Jungle Infirmary

Greetings dear friends, I apologize for the long gap of absence in between entries. You see, life in the jungle is not just an amusing anecdote, for me it is real life. About one month ago I was awoken at 4 in the morning by footsteps at the entry to my cave. This is not an unusual occurrence; it is typically the tell-tale sign of a native who has had a bad dream and needs to share my sleeping chamber for the remainder of the night. When I heard coughing coming from the young native at 4:30 I began to wonder if maybe he was coming down with something. When I awoke again an hour and a half later to the young native rendering my bedding and the majority of my room uninhabitable by means of expulsion I had no more questions. The following days and weeks were a blur of thermometers, doctors, Amoxicillin, body fluids, (none of which actually belonged to me) and as much disinfectant as could be found from Target.

The younger native tried to help me in the early days of this plague before he ultimately succumbed to the illness himself. He felt that I required assistance in upkeep of the jungle as I was tending to the older native. He did many chores for me such as washing the bathroom floor. It perhaps would have been more productive had he not first used the commode and then used that water to wash the floor but I suppose I wasn’t in a position to complain. And while I found it very thoughtful that he had the foresight to prepare dinner while I attempted to clean up from the older native’s latest re-decoration of his room, I would have perhaps chosen to be hungry instead of entering the kitchen to find that he had prepared me a lovely offering of cereal and milk… minus the bowl.

Eventually all three of us had fallen to what I can only imagine was the second coming of the plague. While I find observing and caring for the natives on a normal day challenging; I must say that doing so while severely under the weather is a whole new level of tasking; however one finds creative, albeit not perfect ways to survive. Am I proud of telling the natives that we were playing hospital and I was the patient whose job was to lie as still and silent as possible on the couch as they performed surgery on the bear on the rug? Not particularly, but on a happy note, the bear is in stable condition and I’m told will make it. Am I proud of bringing the younger native into my sleeping chamber, turning on Disney, giving him the iPad and letting myself succumb to the cold medicine at 7:30 at night when I was fatigued and he was wide awake? (Yes, that one I actually found to be rather smart). The bottom line, we caretakers do the best we can with what we’re given.

It has been an excruciating few weeks in the jungle; but I am happy to report that the natives (and I) are on the mend. This became apparent when their surge of energy returned to them to continue about their ways of normalcy in terrorizing the jungle and myself, their caretaker. Stay safe and healthy friends; the jungle is not a place for the weary and it smells oddly of toilet water.