What Doesn't Kill You

Not long ago, wild monkeys in a Malaysian rainforest attacked me. That happened a few months before the wild rat attack that I survived while in Thailand. There was the harrowing escape from 50 angry bulls while hiking in Ecuador, the nearly fatal run-in with a pack of feral dogs in the mean valleys of Canyon Lake, California and the killer cockroaches in Morocco.

Of course there was my being held hostage by two different armed groups in the same week during a trip to Colombia. And while no guns were involved, I cannot forget the fistfights in Ghana, Holland, Italy and Coney Island. These were followed-- years later-- by some brutal verbal fisticuffs in, naturally, Finland, Norway and Denmark.

I have lived to tell about my unpleasant case of trichinosis that I caught while in Guatemala, the malaria that I caught while in Liberia, the strange three day “someone must of drugged my drink” illness that had me laid out flat for three days in a mysterious Parisian apartment. Oh, I must not my six month pregnant belly in a way too small bathing suit in Anguilla-- who knew that embarrassment could be a critical condition?

But what nearly did me in was the salmonella poisoning that I got this weekend. Never eat Indian food at an Irish restaurant cooked by a Chinese chef.

Photo by Andrew Carter