Thank you Dr. Leonard

A couple days before leaving for Abuja I caved and thought I better get a prescription for malaria prophylaxis. I had the usual conversation with Dr. Leonard (a tropical disease specialist) and we figured out the best plan for malaria meds. Then he asked me how I dealt with food and water (aka worms, aeombic dissentary, giardia, etc) and I proudly remarked that I did surprisingly well for a white girl. In Tanzania, I puked only a handful of times and had no problems at all from the other end. Knock on wood. Even still, I relented when Dr. Leonard offered to send me off with Cipro for diarrhea. Sure, why not while we're at it!

Fast forward to Nigeria. Everything is going great! Love the food, love the coworkers, life is good. First trip to the field I am with a visiting American, who is careful to take every health precaution while traveling in Africa. I'm not so careful. While I was more inclined to eat where our Nigerian driver was going to get dinner, we opted to eat at the hotel which is a much safer option. She had the fish soup and rice and I had the chicken and pepper sauce with rice. Yummy! I ate up plenty of the enormous sized portions since we'd skipped lunch so I went to bed happy and content. At about 2:00am I bolted up and ran to the bathroom. Sat on the toilet for a good 5 minutes... plenty of time to contemplate how on earth I could make it through the next six days traveling from village to village when I couldn't keep a meal from passing through me. And then I remembered the Cipro. Thank you Dr. Leonard.

I woke up the next morning with a new lease on life. Lessons learned: food at the hotel is NOT the safer option (go with the driver!) and I may be able to eat all kinds of things armed with this magic pill!