Afternoon, everyone.
Jungle Jim has returned.

Honduras was a very difficult trip, with most of our party getting sick, and one (an RN, no less) has malaria.

Her idiot doc told her that, since she was in Haiti two months ago, she was probably still immune to malaria. Besisdes, he told her, Honduras doesn't really have that much malaria. All she had to do was go to the CDC web site and look at the malaria map and see that, not only is malaria endemic in Honduras, but Olancho state, where we spent our time, has one of the highest malaria rates per capita in Central America. I would never believe a doctor about things like tropical medicne without confirming it for myself. She's supposed to get out of the hospital today, but she was pretty sick.

We are supposed to have a meeting next week to debrief on the trip, and some things have to change before I go there again. We had no medical history of anyone, no list of meds they were on, no release of liability, and never even handed out a list of things to bring and things to be careful of when you're in a third world country. I spent a lot of my time treating people without knowing anything about their medical history or even what meds they might be allergic to. Luckily, no one was seriously injured, but, if someone was unconscious, I would have no idea what to tell the docs once we finally got to a hospital, which was a three hour drive...on a good day. The guy who runs these trips has been doing so for 30 years. He's convinced nothing serious will ever go wrong. Kind of like a pilot who has been flying for 30 years without a crash, so that means he'll never crash. Just dumb.
Had even more excitement our last day. Myself and three of the ladies were leaving the restaurant where we always ate when a pretty scruffy guy came up, pulled out a knife, and said he wanted our money. The "authorities" say to just cooperate and give the scumbag anything he wants. Screw that! I had my pepper spray in my back pocket, so I told him I was getting my wallet and came out with the pepper spray. I think he was checking out the women at the time, so I managed to give him a face full. He dropped the knife, and I got a few good knee kicks in, so he wasn't getting of the ground too soon. The "
vihillantes" that guard the restaurant and hotel heard the ruckus and came running. They dragged him off behind the building and gave him a pretty good beating. There is no effective police presence, so turning him over to cops wasn't an option. They bodily threw him over a six foot wall in the back after his "therapy" and told him it would be a bad idea to come back again. One of the guys had a Remington 870 shotgun and the other an Uzi, so the implication was pretty clear that, if he showed up again, he wouldn't be going home alive that night. Honduras is a very violent place, with 90% of the money held by 10% of the people. The poor rob and steal to live. Add the
narcotrafficer gangs to the mix and it's not a fun place to be when shooting starts.
Finally got home at about midnight Thursday from Atlanta. I had to pick up our RV Friday (after spending $5,800 to get it back in shape) and then do the walkthrough with the mand and his wife from our church, who were going to use it to live in at the site of their new house construction north of Birmingham. After five hours in the ungodly heat we've been having down here, I was fanally ready to take him on a test drive and then send him on his way. I only had one more thing to show him - how to work the bed that comes down from the ceiling. I had tested this 10 times in a row before I left for Honduras with no problems. This time, of course, the bed came down but wouldn't go up. Grrrr...there's no way to drive it with the bed down, since the body flex will cause the bed to come off its tracks and fall completely. He's staying with his granddaughter and I've been trying to figure out what the problem is. I'm pretty sure the motor has burned out, but I need to get some bed stops to hold up the bed, loosen the pinion gears, and see if I can lift it off the front seat backs, whcih I stupidly didn't put forward before lowering the bed. That's what happens when you don't use something for four years.

It has been way too hot to work on during the day, so I've been doing my troubleshooting about midnight, when the temperature finally drops below 90. I've ordered a new motor ($384) and replacing it means tearing all the roof material off the covers one side of the bead and then removing a pop riveted aluminum channel that covers the motors and gears. It's hard to imagine a worse way to engineer a part that is always going to need periodic replacement.
I was pretty proud of myself that I was one of the few on the trip that didn't get sick...until Monday. Then I started to run a fever, got nauseated, and started having about the worst case of runs in my life. I self medicated for two days before I decided it was time to see my doctor. There's a parasite called giardia that produces my symptoms. One of the characteristics is an extremely foul odor from the stool, and I had that for sure.

A stool specimen confirmed it was giardia, so it was seven days of Flagyl and a bunch of Lomotil to get me back to normal. This the first day I feel reasonably normal. It's a great diet plan though. I've lost about 12 pounds.
Rex, this our eighth straight day of 100 degrees or more. We have had exactly zero rain. Looks like you've got some storms up there now. We are once again the black hole of the state, where all storms take a hard left and veer away from us. The heat has been bad enough, but the lack of rain is making it even worse. My lawn looks like a hayfield at harvest time now.
I haven't had a chance to read any of the other postings, but I'll try to get through them all later today. I hope no one has had any tragedies and that things are going as well as can be expected.