Ticks and the Meaning of Life

Pedro and Emeterio lead us, winding up and down the narrow path, clearing brush with machetes as we go. Dirt slides under my feet as we wind our way up to the falls through 'virgin' forests (as our hosts describe them). Twice I stop to pick ticks off my arm, tiny, red and leggy. Before embarking on the hike they doused us with cattle-strength tick spray, declining to disclose the ingredients of the white kerosene-smelling liquid. Its humorous to me that the ticks mock this surely cancer-causing chemical I've bathed in. My friend Luis in Vancouver has set my friends and I up with a trip to the ejido or cooperative farm, that his family is part of on the west coast of Mexico.

I had a strange flash back to a summer I spent in northern Peru after my second year of undergrad. I trekked through mud and bugs out to villages and along rivers to my hearts content collecting stool samples for parasite research [insert inapropiate comment here]. One six day trip where I got to tag along to Aguaruna villages has always stuck in my imagination, likely embellished with multiple tellings. It involved being auctioned off for marriage for two monkeys and a wild boar, eating roasted Rana frogs with plumb maggots from the Aguaje tree among other incidents. The first day of our trip the new outboard motor on the boat failed and we drifted slowly towards the shore. Several of the men hopped onto the muddy bank with their machetes to cut us some sugar care to chew on as the engine was tinkered with. In my naivety in all matters pertaining to tributaries to the Amazon I followed them onto shore thinking this was the perfect pit stop for my pea-sized bladder. Tromping through the mud into the jungle I found a spot and bared my hind end to the wild. Immediately a strange sensation, almost numbness, spread over every exposed inch of my tender skin. Turning to look, my bum was completely black with tiny biting black flies. I jumped up with a shriek and started slapping... to the exquisite delight of my traveling companions who instantly appeared out of the bush, machetes ready to rescue me from certain death.

It was a humbling summer... challenging, fun, eyeopening, lonely, profound... but definitely humbling.

Before I arranged the Peru trip that summer I had an emotional conversation with my parents. I hated university, didn't see the point of being there and had approached them with an (obscenely expensive) opportunity of a field school in Africa. I recall my dad's thoughtful words, giving perspective, delving to the root of my feelings. I had lost sight of the reason I was studying, exhausted and defeated. I find myself in a similar place now, not knowing why I drag myself out of bed each morning, work 100 hour weeks and hating how I have come to see people. As diseases and things on my to-do list instead of people. Scared, sick, loved people. It took a lot of mud and bugs to give me a glimpse of an alternate reality that summer in Peru, and maybe it just took some ticks in Mexico this time.

At days end we removed several more ticks from each others' bodies, squirming at the uncomfortable intimacy of having tiny squirming legs attached to our person... some very personal parts of our person no less. Sometimes it just takes a few ticks to regain faith in life. To be reminded of past passions and future hopes. To realize that I may be on a low part of my journey right now, but I still have a capacity for hope and opportunities to share that hope in ways that recently have seemed clouded over and far away. Ticks.

Grasping at Cockroaches*

As the irritatingly perky barista raised an inquisitive eyebrow in my general slovenly direction, I realized I had in fact reached a brand new low.

Yes, I would like three shots of espresso in my extra-large coffee... and don't stinkin' think you can tell me to have a bloody fabulous day as you place it cheerily on the counter chic barista boy!

Other low points last week? I was told my humour makes it appear that I am in fact incompetent. I poked an (uninvited) hole in an (unsuspecting) uterus shortly after squirting my (unsuspecting) attending in the face with saline... to the OR nurses' delight. I actually did grocery shopping at the Shoppers IN the hospital (and felt an instant of normalcy as I strolled down the aisles mid-day). I ate poutine for breakfast, chocolate milk for lunch and an avocado for supper. Someone stole the carrier off my bike while at work after a long post-call day, causing tears to well up in my eyes and a lump of overwhelming emotion clogged my throat.

But truth is, I had felt that lump the day before. As I sat with Nate, a man in his early 70s, as his wife was vomiting into the toilet, a day after the surgery to debulk her advanced ovarian cancer. He wore a John Deere cap and an Abraham Lincoln-style beard. His gentle smile won me over as he told me about driving into town yesterday (from Fort St. Nowhere of course).

Isn't it amazing that at 9 at night those stores are still open? You'd never see that where we're from, everything rolls up at 7! I know Flo loves sausage rolls so I went out and bought two, one for me and one for her last night. We've been together 38 years you know, been through a lot, now its my turn to take care of her and boy does she ever have a will of steel.

The irony of retractable vomiting and the thoughtfulness of a sausage roll gift hit me. Flo came back from the washroom, stooped and thin, her weathered wrinkles gave the sunken post-chemo cheeks and bald head a look of wisdom beyond words. She was full of piss and vinegar alright. So we sat and chatted about nausea, sausage rolls and pick-up trucks.

It put all of my misery into a divine perspective.

So what if Dr. Orange feels I should be more professional and less personal? That's actually not who I aspire to be. I'd rather get to know Flo and Nate, joke about shooting gophers and figure out how we're going to treat her high blood pressure with home made pies and venison.


*Reference to Papillon (1973) ... yes, I'm planning an escape.