Last weekend, Noel and a new friend, Silvio, an architect, and I were collected by an American couple, Dave and Mary, for a visit to their gorgeous new (slightly incomplete) new house in Pochomil, about an hour's drive up the Pacific coast.
Dave combined old and new ideas in his design for the house.
Dave, Noel and Silvio, with Patch, and the ocean beyond.
Below: Pepper and Patch
The seaside community is bigger than La Boquita, but similar, in that the homes lining the sea and beach are large, modern, and bespeak a level of means not usually seen in small Nicaraguan towns. Across the road inland and beyond, the houses are much more modest, with dogs ranging freely amidst pigs and horses, oxen and cattle. These last are only occasional, I hasten to clarify.
We had a nice meal on the aft porch and Mary and I fell to yakking with gusto, neither of us having many English-speaking women friends here. We found we had much in common, and I had a few too many rum and Cokes.
As it happened, I had gotten a large insect bite on my back about two weeks prior—a spider, I thought. It had become a bit bigger and warmer, and I suspected it was infected. So, the next morning, as Dave was driving me home, we stopped at a farmacia where the clerk took a photo of the ugly red bump and emailed it to a physician, who recommended an antibiotic and a medicated topical cream.
A mile or so of the road is gloriouslyshaded in a tunnel of leaves.
Once home, I bid adios to Maria José, who had stayed the night with my pups, and drank a couple of bottles of water to re-hydrate my slightly hungover system. I read the paper online, fed the chickens, skipped lunch in favor of more water, and suddenly spiked a fever, followed by chills. I put myself to bed and panic began setting in. I was well and truly sick. I could not feel my legs under the sheet, and my heart was pounding. And still the chills and fever. I wondered if I had waited too long to address the infected bite, and feared I had a blood infection. I was shaking uncontrollably. Frantic, I called my next door neighbor, Fatima. She and her husband drove me to the Jinotepe hospital, and also called Maria José and asked her to meet us there.My blood pressure was sky high, and the doctor put something under my tongue to reduce the BP. They diagnosed an abscessed bite, and sent me home with a new antibiotic and orders to have my blood pressure checked daily for a week.
This I did at my local health center, a short walk from my house. The nurse declared that my ugly red bite was the result of a kind of fly, who had deposited an egg in my back. (My blood pressure was back to its normal good levels,) The clinic was busy, so she arranged to remove the presumed maggot on Friday.
Despite much squeezing and pushing and genuine pain, no worm emerged. The abscess remains, minus what had been evacuated. I return to the hospital Sunday for a checkup, and I owe Maria José big time, as she has accompanied me to the clinic daily and cared for me like a pro. And, by the way, all my healthcare at the hospital and clinic was free.
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