On medicine

Now that it's been almost two weeks, I sometimes wake myself up when I try to roll onto my right side and get a huge jolt of pain from my ribs and shoulder.

I think I might've done more damage than I initially thought.

It's just that when it's dark and you've just peeled yourself off the pavement, functionality is extremely desireable, and your body will trick itself into believing it's in good working order. And by the time the endorphins wear off, there's enough of a sense of what's wrong that you aren't actually trying to breathe, which would cue off the rib problems. And you don't try to move your shoulder, which might start the popping noises earlier. And even as the trauma pain overwhelms the drugs you throw at it, the drugs help enough to think, well, at least I'm not feeling quite as unfunctional. So you just keep plugging until almost two weeks later you realize how much it hurts to sleep on the biscuit mattress. And that all the hype and whatnot about festering wounds in the tropics is actually true, so now I'm waking up to a full handful of horsepills: antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, anti-diarrheal, supplemental protein and vitamins, washed down with a hospital-grade food-substitute drink ordinarily reserved for feeding tube applications.

Despite everything, my legs still swell to elephantine sausages, and my blood protein levels have dropped to just under half of normal.