Pills, pills, pills!

I was packing tonight and I realized I am taking eight different prescription medications with me on this trip. I have an entire bag devoted to pills. At my doctor's recommendation, I have anti-malaria pills, pills for altitude sickness (Cusco, Peru is at 11,300 feet), antibiotics (for some reason he tossed those in when he found out I was going to Bangkok), pills in case I get typhoid, pills in case I drink the water (if you know what I mean)...I can't keep track of them. For all I know, there are some pills in here that make me invisible and let me see through time.

My primary concern is not that I am going to get sick, it's that I'm going to get arrested for walking around with 65 pounds of pills in my suitcase. I don't want to end up like the guy in "Midnight Express". It's not that I'm too pretty to go to prison, I just hate having a roommate.

I wonder if this is what people mean when they talk about "adventure travel". Can you measure adventure in number of prescriptions? If so, where do I rank having 8 of them? I can't imagine what ailment could befall me that I do not already have a pill to counteract. Maybe there's some disease in New Guinea that makes your hand take on a life of its own and try to strangle you. I don't have a pill for that one. But what good would a pill be when you couldn't even open the child-proof cap because your hand is trying to kill you? I leave it to medical science to address these questions.

I feel a certain amount of embarrassment having all these pills because each pill is physical evidence of my weak, Westernized immune system. Do the Cambodians walk around popping anti-malaria pills all day? No, they don't. They just get malaria. And I bet they don't bitch about it, either.

I wonder if growing up there it's similar to the West, when the neighbor kid gets chicken pox and your parents send you off to play with him. "Why don't you go play with Phirun? He's got malaria and that disease where your hand tries to kill you. Take a sweater."

There's no doubt about it -- my immune system is a pansy.