A few decades ago, back when I lived in Syndey, I came back from the States with a toasty Giardia infection that I most definitely picked up from a pristine spring near High Falls, New York. It didn’t impact any of the locals there, but when I was a kid and drank water our of polluted mountain streams, my intestinal plants and animals apparently made a peace treaty with Rocky Mountain Giardia that did not offer reciprocation status with Upstate New York Giardia.
So I’m shitting my brains out in my tastefully-furnished apartment in Potts Point, and I sez to my self “self, you are gonna die if this goes on too much longer.” I head to the doctor … or at least I assumed it was a doctor. But it was Australia and that was no doctor.
I walk into this doctor’s office, told him what I just told y’all, and he tells me to stop eating any food at all for 24 hours. “Mate, you kin have an oice-pop, or a feezy drink, but na food. Twinny-four hours. You got it?”
Quack. Whatever.
I go back to my tasteful apartment in Sydney, and I really do need to share, how lovely was that flat. It was the apartment that Gidget used to make a gin and tonic for a pro surfer on the Duke Kahanamoku tour. I’m sitting on the toilet in my tasteful apartment with Sally Fields and Miki in the living room, my Prime American Male Body veering unavoidably to the same death that kills one-in-ten Haitian children. That’s what diarrhea does when it is left untreated. I avoid eating for half the day, finally I get hungry and I eat a little something, eat a banana, I can’t remember exactly what I ate.
A day later, Sally Field and Miki are long gone, my place looks like the day after an industry party with those same damned three chicks from Sweden who always make a mess of my life, while the New Zealand and Aussie chicks make a mess of my heart. Whatever rosy glow I had of my future had quickly dissolved into the reality that I was dying a Third World Death in a First World Country. It’s a reality that the unhoused deal with on a daily basis, but it isn’t something to which stylish playboy newspaper reporters find themselves.
I get down to the clinic again, I was sure I would get a real doctor who gives out cures, rather than a wannabe Jainist who hands out 10-day fasts. Then, as now, I am an American, and I need pills. It is our nature as stylish playboy newspaper reporters to respond well to those pills. What was the name of the reporter guy who hung out with Ralph Steadman? I can’t place his name at the moment, the Gonzo guy.
Regardless, we do well with pills.
So I’m sitting in the little office, eager to meet with an actual doctor, and who the fuck comes in the room again? It’s that same quack from before! What the sideways-mounted fuck is this?
He said to me “Mate, dan’t say anotha wahd, I know why yer here Mate.”
“I’m really very sick. I need help doctor.”
“You didn’t do what I told you to do.”
“I did!”
“You didn’t. Because if you did what I told you to do, you wouldn’t be in my office right now.”
“I need medicine.”
“I told you what to do. No food for twinny-fawr hours. You kin have an ice-pop.”
Fucking quack.
I go back home, I didn’t eat any food for at least twelve hours. Then I took a bite of a chocolate chip cookie to stop my stomach from grumbling.
So then I’m back in that same clinic, and that same outback-looking motherfucker comes in the room, calls me a liar to my face, and tells me to go home and not eat for 24 hours. He said I could have ice pops. I didn’t have any ice-pops because I was a stylish playboy newspaper reporter. I bought some ice-pops. It unnerved me that they were so cheap, I think about one Aussie Dollar for the box. None of that frozen fruit shit, these were actual ice-pops, just water, sugar and some flavoring and coloring that gives the consumer the vague recollection of something fruity as they lick the little thing to oblivion whilst debating if they should in fact steal that pogo stick from the Cheeseman Park playground. That kind of ice-pop.
I make it 24 hours, no medicine, no food, the ice-pops sorta distracted me from the hunger, but it wasn’t a big deal, fasts are usually not that difficult once you resign yourself to one. And then maybe 26 hours later, I eat some food, and my American colon in a More-American-Than-America Continent maintains, and I get my strength back.
That’s what happened, the Aussie Doctor was apparently not threatened by medical malpractice lawsuits, and he was able to practice medicine as American doctors wished they could practice medicine, or practice medicine the way the American dentists practice medicine. That Aussie Doctor had a sufficiently well-understood knowledge of the human digestive system that he was able to create a path forward, and then force this fucking idiot of a non-medical person to actually do what the doctor prescribes. American Doctors don’t get to do that anymore. Yes, the pharmaceutical companies made their kind wealthy, but along with the wealth and the majestic public relations campaigns comes the cost of letting a pharma company put its supple latex finger up your arse … What is the old joke? Was it something like the only time you really need to worry during your prostate exam is when you see both of the doctors hands on your shoulders. Just one hand? Eh, you’re probably alright.
I never thought I would wax poetic about getting the eruptions from a little Giardia. But in this new era of Biocolonialism, those days sound wistfully simple in comparison.