But, that would be a big load of horse manure (which is excellent material for both compost and plaster, in case you were wondering).
While we've had quite the adventure and learned HEAPS about sustainable/natural building, we have abandoned our initial plan to start our own sustainability school... at least for now. :{
In a nutshell, let's just say we found very few "intelligent idealists with a plan to build a more sustainable society," and many more "cash-poor societal dropouts trying to milk a niche market in pseudo-sustainability." (More on this in a later post... LOTS more.)
Ugh.
So, to recap… You already know about the terrible bait-and-switch that happened to us at the Solar Ark in August 2013. After that, we tried to make the best of our "big adventure" and traveled around the Southwest, found a cute little Colorado cabin to hole up in for that winter, and I kept scouring the web for any glimmer of hope that we could still find some place to learn sustainable building. When I found an ad for an affordable RV spot including cob building training in Bandon, Oregon, we latched on to that as our new plan and, in April 2014, headed farther west, hoping we had finally found some like-minded sustainable builders.
Alas, gentle reader, we were in for more abuse. Believe it or not, within weeks of arrival in Bandon, we both got infected with something one would usually associate with dicey Third World Country water supplies: GIARDIA (aka, Giardia lamblia or Giardia intestinalis, the evil little protozoan that causes "Montezuma's Revenge" and "Beaver Fever").
For flippin' sake, can't we catch a break already?! :{
But by the end of May, we both felt like crap. [You know you love bathroom puns, just as much as I do. Go on, admit it!] ;)
I had symptoms first, and then Nate got them, and we both just felt like we were being constantly drained of energy (which we were, literally, by teeming hordes of Giardia, latched on to the inside linings of our small intestines, stealing our food and making us bleed internally). Here's a nice electron micrograph for you, of giardia in a gerbil's intestine:
I was not kidding about teeming hordes!
The funny thing is, we really didn't have the hallmark symptom of giardiasis, which is supposed to be terrible diarrhea. Instead, we had:
- Crazy fatigue (that worsened with any kind of effort or even just being slightly warm)
- Grumpiness
- Impenetrable brain fog
- Intense hunger (especially for RED MEAT) and a need to eat WAY more than usual
- Nausea (just lucky ol' me)
The Para-Rid treatment is a three-week course of pills, which initially made us feel slightly better... and then we started feeling awful again during the last week on it and could barely force ourselves to gag down the last few days' worth of doses. Blech.
Look at that: I've managed to catch you up all the way to July!
Well, OK, not really.
Sure, other stuff was happening at the place we were staying in Bandon, but we were half-comatose and mildly angry at the world the whole time, so we found ourselves participating less and less in activities around the property, including the garden (which Nate had worked really hard on, before he got sick).
Check out Nate's kale forest! (Yes, KALE! Four feet tall and still delicious!)
We were even too exhausted to do much of the prep for the upcoming July "Complete Cob" workshop, which was to be the high point of our natural building learning experience. :( We also stopped sharing food with the work/community group, since we were basically eating it all ourselves.
We finally gave up on over-the-counter remedies and went to the doctor in mid-July. We found out than that Nate had lost 15 pounds (he was down to his high school weight); I, on the other hand, had lost a mere 3 pounds... so unfair. We also both had low hemoglobin and oxygen saturation values, and my sample was positive for Giardia.
What sample, you ask? Oh, Dear Reader, you don't miss anything, do you? I actually asked if we could bring fecal samples to our INITIAL VISIT with the doc, since I was so sure that would get us a proper diagnosis... and she agreed! Sort of a funny way to start off with a doc: "Hi, nice to meet you. And here is the bag of poo I've brought you!"
Even though Nate's sample was negative, we both ended up getting diagnosed with giardiasis, since (1) we both had symptoms, (2) the little buggers are notoriously hard to find in fecal samples, and (3) when you're infected, you don't actually shed them all the time. So, I guess congratulations to me for shedding the little bastards at the right time. Yuck.
Our diagnoses came on the same day the "Complete Cob" workshop was starting. Participants were arriving, so I made sure the hosts (our landlords) knew there was a possible water safety issue either at their place, or at the main Cob Cottage Company (CCC) location that the group would visit mid-week. Long story short on that: we finally found out we had been drinking untreated stream water (yeah, as our tap water!) in Bandon, and we remembered having eaten at CCC way back in early May, where they also use untreated stream water for food prep (good grief).
So, Astute Reader, you must be wondering how it Nate and I got sick when nobody else did. Ahhh... well, that is very interesting indeed! It turns out that only about 30% of people with giardiasis exhibit any symptoms at all. =:-O And, in those who do have symptoms, if the infection goes untreated (which happens to those in total denial about the sheer idiocy of drinking untreated stream water), most will just experience brief bouts of diarrhea and/or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and/or chronic fatigue syndrome.
Anyway, we were assured by our asymptomatic Bandon landlords that they were going to get their water tested... which they later reneged on, having decided they didn't want to risk getting reported to the state's Department of Environmental Quality... if there was a problem.
Ya' know, it really makes you lose respect for people when they pull shit like that. :{
Anyway, we ended up having to take a five-day course of an awful, body-system-destroying antibiotic called metronidazole (brand name Flagyl).
The most disturbing of its MANY side effects is that is can cause severe neurological/psychotic effects, such as severe depression (which kept Nate in bed for two days: no kidding!), hallucinations, neurotoxicity (death to nerve cells), and more. Whee! What fun! I actually developed photopsia (flashes of light) in my left eye on day 3, which has persisted ever since. It could be unrelated to the Flagyl, but it seems awfully suspicious given the timing.
Good thing we'd know if we could drink the water again, once those test results... um... right, yeah, no test results. Since we didn't know where we had drank down our terrible intestinal hitchhikers, now we had to embark on some serious prevention. We ordered an under-sink three-stage filter that removes particles down to 0.025 microns (that's 25/1000ths of a millimeter!), so even giardia cysts that can be as small as 8 microns would not get through. Here is the system we bought (a TL3 Neo-Pure... from Amazon, of course!), which we love, for drinking water:
But without the palapas, swim-up bars, reposado margaritas, and fabulous Mexican food, the mucho cuidado factor just didn't seem worth it. After a couple of months of clamped-mouth showering, we had pretty much just had enough of the whole situation, and we started talking about leaving... which we finally did, in December. Tails between our legs, and fingers crossed she would make it, we packed up our dear Baba G once more in preparation for a cross-country road trip back to the Florida Keys for Christmas.
I promise to get you all caught up on the rest of our adventures in Oregon (we did have some great ones!), so we'll be doing a bit of backpedaling before we move forward again to the road trip!
Up Next: Brewskis, Beaches, and Bad Forestry in The Beaver State!
