Zach’s Travels

For those interested, I have fully recovered from the unknown stomach illness. For those of you who sent kind thoughts of “get well,” “please don’t die” and the like - thank you. For those of you who secretly hoped this would be the end of me and sat eagerly waiting to hear the wonderful news of my departure from this sweet earth - better luck next time. I have learned to take strength from the cockroaches who have found a permanent home in my first floor bathroom. Not even the force of (any) god can kill them.

Looking back, though, I have reached a couple of conclusions. The first is that unmarked and unlabeled anti-diarrhea pills are a good thing. Of course, by the time I actually got them the damage had already been done, but they did, perhaps, prevent the complete loss of my small intestine. For that I am thankful. The problem, however, is that the effects of aforementioned pills continue to exist long after the last of the sickness has drifted.

Now I’m not a doctor, so this is only slightly better than a stab-in-the-dark guess (only because with the help of Google I consider myself on par with my last doctor - Kluzinski - in terms of medical knowledge. It’s arguable he received his knowledge from Yahoo). But my understanding of anti-diarrhea pills is this: Once the capsule dissolves in the stomach or somewhere around the small intestine, a hundred or so microscopic worker men are released. And these workers are on a mission: To build an unbreakable, titanium wall between the exit point and, well, I think you understand.

And what a wall do they build! The more pills you take, the more workers you ingest and the stronger your wall becomes. Depending on the nature of WHY you created the wall to begin with, there is a solid chance that at the time of ingesting all those little worker men you felt it was necessary to have the largest wall possible. “Bigger! Larger! Stronger!” you should from the outside.

Initially this wall is much welcomed and presents no problems, particularly if you haven’t been eating. The problem arises after you start to eat. Now I could illustrate this point with examples from cartoons, but I figure it is time to grow up and use big boy terms.

It’s really a matter of physics (the fact that I have never taken a Physics class is irrelevant, especially since I just read a book on string theory and that’s all you really need to know anyway). When you only have so much space to fill up, and you start to reach the point of maximum capacity without the means of allowing the build up exit, you have a problem.

“Break down the wall,” you say. Oh! If only it were so simple. These workers only work one way. They build. They don’t dismantle. Thus you are left at the mercy of their craftsmanship - forced to deal with a body craving nutrients it was denied for three days without any means of letting out the garbage. I think you understand the dilemma.

Is this getting too personal?

Thankfully hope is on the horizon. While our newly-created Berlin wall stands strong and formidable against challenge, a product of the authoritarian that created it, the future is found in the masses. The need for compromise to exist between stomach and exit point. An amicable, symbiotic relationship where each side realizes they need the other. Abuse of the system is what got us to this point, thus compromise is the only way out.

And the body rallies together, shouting cries of “Viva la revolution.” Brandishing whatever weapons they can find, the masses began to tear down the barrier of inequality and individualism. At first success is minimal. A strong divide has been built and its unwillingness to crumble serves as an initial sign of defeat to the forces that have rallied. But it is just when all hope seems lost, when fatigue has mixed with despair, that Large Intestine stands up to rally the troops. After a tear-jerking speech of “times before the wall” and a future where exit points and small intestines are “able to live together in harmony and peace,” fatigue began to morph into excitement and energy and despair was transformed into a renewed hope for the future. “The future is ours!” The forces let out a roar of agreement and passion and attacked the wall with a never-before-known fervor.

The wall, slowly at first but then with the speed that comes from passion and dedication from those hard at work, began to fall. And fall it did, until all that was left of the wall was the memory the old cells of the body remember as a time that we must never forget. A time of unhappiness and of inequality and pain. And a vow that it must never happen again.

…And I breathed a large sigh of relief. “It has ended.”

(I said at the beginning of this post I had reached a couple of conclusions.  It looks as though I digressed a bit and forgot what else I had learned.  Viva la revolution!)

Note:  Thanks to my CS Adviser Dave for pointing out my incorrect usage of “diuretic.” I STILL can’t find, if it exists, a proper spelling for anti-diarrhetic.  I always get the little red squiggly thing.  So I changed it to “anti-diarrhea pills.”  Technical, I know.