Alyssa gets strange medical ailment in Peru, part 1 of I am sure many

So I have a veritable rainforest of bugs that call my bed their home, so I am getting quite used to waking up with bug bites in all sorts of awkward places. I usually try to brush my bed out before I get in it; sometimes I just spray Raid directly into sheets, which will probably cut several years off my life, but is often worth it, in my opinion. A couple days ago, I had a bug bite on my sternum…ish. Two days ago, I woke up to a huge red rash covering the entire area. I assumed I was just scratching it in my sleep and it was irritated, until the next morning, when there were blisters all over it and I could no longer do anything but lie very still on my back without causing myself a large amount of pain. Rachel came over coincidentally, and I told her to fetch our Cusqueña doctor friend, Otilia. Otilia came over, was properly dismayed, and informed me that this was the work of the llulle (pronounced yoo-yay), an insect native only to the high jungle of northern Peru.

Cool, I love endemism.

Otilia first offered to inject me with something, this time, an anti-inflammatory (some of you may remember the time another Peruvian doctor offered to inject me with Penicillin to see if I was allergic). I called Suni, one of our Peace Corps doctors, who (bless her Limeña heart), told Otilia that Volunteers aren’t allowed to receive injections at site, and supposedly tried to call PC Washington to see if anyone there had heard of this bug. At least that’s what Otilia said (“La doctora está llamando por otro lado…Washington?”). As far as the injection thing goes, for anyone who has seen me get a shot, or had to be pulled out of Spanish class on a weekly basis to hold my hand during one, this was obviously good news. Otilia then told me that people have tried to cure llulle rashes through traditional methods, but the only thing that cures llulle is the application of the leaves a llulle plant. She told me this gravely, and put in as an aside that she didn’t believe in that sort of stuff, but it was true. She even put finger quotes around the word “believe.” She also told me that I needed to apply lemon. Okay, whatever. So this very sweet woman I don’t know, Gloria, is in my bedroom suddenly, pouring lemon on my chest. Rachel is watching this debacle and says, “Um, Alyssa, you’re kind of…falling out…there.” I responded, “Rachel, a woman I don’t know if making ceviche out of my cleavage, do I look like my dignity is high on my list of priorities?” Gloria then went looking for the llulle plant, which she found and brought back. She heated it and applied the juice, and then left. Otilia brought me some antihistamine and a tranquilizer. The latter was a very good idea, for it is quite boring to lie motionless on one’s back for long periods of time. Unfortunately, I have an unexplainable resistance to tranquilizers (Benadryl, Dramamine, and Tylenol 3 all fail to knock me out), but I had a pleasant three hours or so.

I wake up today, and the wound is worse. Far more blisters and pain. Excellent. Otilia comes by, looks, and said, “Yeah…it’s what I thought. Gloria brought the wrong plant.”
(An aside: I did not realize until that moment that the word “equivocado” could be used for inanimate objects to mean “wrong” and not necessarily “mistaken.” So at the time it sounded like “the plant was mistaken!” which made me laugh for 12 seconds or so.) So I lived with sticky plant goo on me and all over my sheets for a day for nothing. Humberto brought the correct plant today, or so I hope, and showed me how to heat it, but left in a hurry due to the delicateness of the rash’s placement. This time, Señora Teo applied the plant goo. Rachel ran into Juan, whom I was supposed to meet with today, in the street. The gossip is getting around town that I’m out with the llulle. Juan informed her that the only proven way to cure llulle is the application of breast milk. He assumed that for some reason she would not understand the phrase “leche maternal,” and gave her some sort of charade that I would pay money to see. Rachel then came over, told me about her encounter with Juan, and announced, “I brought you chocolate, pasta for dinner if you want it, some cake, a ‘Friends’ DVD, and a book, you know, if you want me to read aloud to you. And you know I would lactate on you if I could. All over.” For my very adorably Southern sitemate, who cannot say the word “nipple,” this was a very amusing announcement.

Otilia also has this funny habit of very suddenly assuming you (actually, I think she only does it to me and Rachel) lack the most basic knowledge and patiently correcting you. She said today about the wound, “It resembles first-degree burn,” and I said, “No, second-degree burn, first-degree burns don’t blister.” She smiled and said, “No no, sweetie, you didn’t get burnt. You got bit by a bug.”

Teo thinks I will be suffering from the llulle for another week. That is the worst news I have heard in a long time. I hurt quite a lot and am very useless and have shed a lot of tears in just these two days. I want lots of things I can’t have, American medicine (or at least being within 19 hours of the PC doctors in Lima) being at the top of the list. It makes me want to go on medical leave in Piura right now, and go to the clinic, and live somewhere where the bathroom is fewer than a hill away and there’s no rain, but at the same time I know I might as well stick it out here, where people fuss over me and make sure I get meals and tranquilizers. The only thing I risk here is more llulle, which it seems I already have on my arm. Good Lord.

One thing I do when I feel bad here, other than listen to my “Cheer up, you’re in the Peace Corps” playlist, is read Close of Service profiles from Peru 4, who just left. We got issued the twice-annual PC-Peru magazine when we got here, and in it, all of the exiting Volunteers reflect on their service, and talk about all the horrible experiences with a certain “it’s all over now, so it’s funny” detachment. I have read and re-read the COS Profiles a creepy number of times, given the number of Peru 4 Volunteers I actually met. It just makes me feel so good to think, “Someday, a very very very long time from now, this will all be over, and I will laugh at the fact that someone put the wrong homeopathic remedy on my blistering wound,” and COS profiles are physical evidence that the day is out there…somewhere.

To end this on a good note, the señora at the store closest to me started selling bananas for eating straight and not for frying, and they are some of the most delicious bananas I’ve ever had.