During my most recent vacation, I became sicker than I've ever been in my life. It was a very bad and scary experience. Travelling to so many different places the last ten years or so has been awesome, but it appears there are some places that are not for me. At least I think the environment is what struck me.
My wife and I went to Mexico City in January, and I was very hyped for it. I read about the city center in Mexico City during my college Spanish classes and how bustling it was. I'm always glad to go to bustling areas because they remind me of growing up in Chicago. We were also going to go see Lucha Libre, and of course as a lifelong pro wrestling fan I was looking forward to that. What I remembered after we got to Mexico City was that it's a very elevated city, some 7,300 feet, which is 2,000 feet higher than Denver. And I really had not even experienced the elevation of Denver--on a church bus trip to Los Angeles when I was eleven, we went to Pike's Peak, but that was for one day, and I don't remember any adverse effects. This was a five-day trip to Mexico City, and I'm a carrier of sickle cell trait, which was another complication of extreme elevation that I wasn't aware of before the trip. The stage was set for a disastrous trip. I just didn't know it.
The first day was fine. We ate with my wife's travel party outdoors at a restaurant a few hours after we landed. The next day, we took a very long van ride up the mountains into even higher elevation to visit ancient pyramids and ruins. One poor woman in our party couldn't stop throwing up. We had to pull over twice to let her out. We assumed it was just car sickness, but hell, that may have been the elevation striking her the way it would strike me. My wife and I, being not in great shape, didn't walk around too much at the ruins, but we were still exerting and short of breath. After lunch, we had some time to lay in bed before going out to the wrestling match, which was more exertion because there was some walking around the Arena Mexico neighborhood and also a lot of stairs up to the second level where our tickets were. Still, we got back to the hotel in one piece.
The third day is what took me out. We walked around a stuffy market for a while, then we were on our feet for about two hours waiting to get into and then walking around the Frida Kahlo House, then we walked around a park eating ice cream and churros, then we had lunch at a very wide flower market that had all kinds of other shops and merchandise, and I was so dry that despite having water waiting at the hotel, I had to buy bottled water on our way out of the flower market. Our bathroom at the hotel had what's called a water closet, which is when they close off the toilet from the rest of the bathroom behind a door. Great for privacy, awful for smells if the ventilation sucks, which it did at this hotel. I had always felt a little nauseous every time I went in there, but after this long day and after the wife used the toilet, I went in and felt very sick from the smell, and instead of using the facilities as I intended, my stomach cramped and I hurled. I was not happy. Throwing up is very high on the list of things I hate experiencing. Like, top three easy. But it happened, so I laid down and tried to relax. But maybe ninety minutes later, I felt a heartburn-like sensation, which I never feel, and I got nauseous, and I had to barf again. Ninety minutes later, I barfed again. Two hours later, I barfed again. This went on into the morning. I lost count of how many times I got up after nodding off and threw up again. It was either six, seven, or eight. I wasn't eating or drinking anything during this time, so those last few trips were more heaving than barfing because I no longer had anything left to barf. My breathing was also becoming very labored. Every breath was a struggle and was accompanied by a deep grunt that really worried my wife. The only thing that made me feel a little better is when I put on my CPAP mask and was able to start getting some oxygen. Once people from our travel group got word of my illness, they brought items that were useful like electrolyte-infused powder to stir into my water and anti-nausea pills and ibuprofen. The first time I tried to throw down some ibuprofen, though, I was trying to keep the nausea pill under my tongue and let it dissolve. The water and ibuprofen immediately came back up, and that was also the end of the nausea pill.
I did sip some water and keep down some chicken and rice later on, and I saw a doctor who made a house call and prescribed me some drugs for my high sugar and blood pressure. The heavy breathing wasn't present by the time he got there, so he didn't think I needed more serious attention, but he did say I should get to a facility if the nausea or breathing issues returned. They didn't, not until the fifth day when it was time to leave. I had been feeling better and not throwing up, and then I walked outside to catch the van to the airport, and by the time we got there, the shallow breathing was back and I was feeling dizzy. My wife made the smart decision to have airport workers bring a wheelchair and take me to the gate instead of hoping that I made it on my own. The walk through the Mexico City airport would not have gone well for me. It was a very, very long walk to our gate, at the end of the airport as it turned out. The walk to customs after we landed in Houston would not have been fun either, but I really was fine by that point because I was out of the elevation in Mexico City. By the time we landed in Memphis that night, I didn't use the wheelchair at all.
The illness was a trauma on my body. I didn't have my normal appetite for a couple weeks. I felt burning every time I drank something for the next couple weeks. I still feel occasional nausea. I had no energy. I even had hearing issues for a couple weeks. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm telling you, every piece of music I heard, commercials, my iPod, the radio, you name it, sounded like it was at a lower pitch. That really scared me because I couldn't fix it and didn't know if it was permanent, but it went away eventually. Everyone had a joke about the water in Mexico being the real culprit for my sickness, but no, this travel group was not small, maybe a dozen or more folks, and were all drinking and eating the same stuff, and most of them were fine (the woman throwing up in the van notwithstanding). I really think it was the elevation. There was a specific spleen affliction that occurred being in elevation with sickle cell trait, and I had all the symptoms with the exception of a sharp left abdominal pain. So hopefully it wasn't that, but the constant barfing, the nausea, the cramping, I really had never been through that, so I'm thinking it was the air. We were also told that this time of year, the pollution is really bad in Mexico City due to the atmospheric pressure, so that probably didn't help matters. The bottom line is, I can't just go anywhere. I have to research before I visit new places, and my wife and I had fantasies of retiring to Mexico City and living in a more affordable part of the world than here in the U.S. That won't be happening. But I wanted to share the experience in case others have gone through this and wondered why they got so ill. I don't blame the food, the water, or anything else in Mexico City. I think it was running around and going too hard in that elevation having never experienced being that high. It ain't for everyone.
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