One Hell of a Drug

I’ll start by saying I’m not writing this or sharing this because I want to worry anyone or stress anyone out (I’m talking to you, Mom). I’m writing this because I need to. To put it lightly, this has been no cake walk. (Heads Up: I have a song that’ll play when you read the rest of this. Felt it was appropriate.)

During my third week here in India, I finally found some solace; but reason can only take you so far when you’re fighting against chemicals being altered. It started with a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve had this bad taste since nearly the first week here. I thought it was due to the change in water and eating habits. By the second week, I noticed my tongue looked a little weird, but again chalked it up to different water and different food. But by the third week–after three weeks of drinking the same water and eating the same things–my tongue was still looking different. I had this massive white patch on my tongue. My throat was a little sore.

Of course the first thing I did was go onto Google and look up my symptoms (huge mistake). I tried narrowing everything down to these symptoms in people who were traveling or had recently traveled, and it led me to doxycycline hyclate. What is doxycycline hyclate, you might ask? Normally prescribed as an antibiotic, it’s used to treat a wide variety of bacterial infections. It’s also used as a preventative measure against malaria. One of its side effects is that prolonged use may result in oral thrush. Oral thrush is commonly diagnosed based on white patches on the tongue and cheeks. Cool.

I ended up speaking with the hotel doctor and it wasn’t too much help to be honest. There was the language barrier issue, and he basically told me to keep taking my malaria pills. It makes sense, I guess. It’s not like I should just stop all of the sudden. However, realizing that the bad taste in my mouth wasn’t just due to the changes but my body reacting to my medication, it made me think: what other side effects might I be experiencing and not know it?

According to some studies, several people have reported issues with anxiety, depression, and emotional distress. Check, check, and check. Considering some of these things were preexisting conditions, it basically feels like the malaria pills are just exacerbating an already challenging aspect of my life.

I’d be lying if I said everything was good. These last few weeks have been rough. Because of scheduling, I don’t actually work with anyone from the States, so it’s just me and my agents (technically, the others are here but I haven’t seen them in two weeks and don’t overlap with anyone). When you’re in a country where you were advised by your work, family, friends, random person on the street that you should not travel alone, but you are alone, it makes things quite difficult.

I’ve been kind of obsessively stuck on this. I feel like I drew the short end of the stick. It’s not like I could bring up this issue to my supervisors, because there’s no business need to move anyone around. At work, I’m fine. Busy, but fine. It’s everything else that’s been hard. I’m living alone (which is already difficult for me), but now I’m also eating alone, in my free time alone. Alone. I don’t think this would be as difficult for me if I could travel around freely. There’s a lot I’d like to do, and if I were somewhere else, I’d just go do it. But I can’t. I would ask the agents, but I’m learning that I have to still maintain the work/life line with the others. Rather than make my job more complicated, it’s just better if I keep my distance.

I had plans for the things I wanted to experience here. I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to experience it. And I don’t know if it’s my physical situation or my mental situation that will hold me back. It’s nice to know that it’s not just me–I’m not cracking, my anti-depressants didn’t suddenly stop working. I’m taking medication that has been taking a toll on me, mentally and physically. That was comforting at first, and actually made me feel better for awhile. But then all of the anxieties and the disappointment in how this is playing out came flooding back in.

It’s getting harder and harder to say I’m fine. I’m not fine. I took this opportunity because I knew that I could get so much from it–and work-wise, I think I am. I have felt more confident about my job performance over the last couple of weeks than I have in a long time. But I thought I’d get more than just work performance out of this. Instead, I’ve been fighting my mental state harder than I think I’ve ever had to before.

Perhaps that’s what I’ll get out of this. I won’t get the great travel experience, but I’ll be stronger mentally once all of this is done. Perhaps this is my “if I can survive this, I can survive anything” moment. I didn’t want it to be. I don’t want it to be. I don’t want this to be an experience I have to just survive through, I want this to be an experience of a lifetime.