Mexico

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For the past few years I have been very ill. A few months back I spent some time in a Mexican Hospital undergoing a treatment to rid myself of this curse, a treatment not allowed in the US. The short of it is that they drain your blood and run it through a sieve ... I'm sure that's not what they really do, but that's all I could make out, not speaking the language. They drain the poison out somehow while you are under the influence of anesthetic ... put to sleep by an anesthesiologist, of course. They tell you that when you wake up you will be free from the illness ... I had heard of this place from others, and good was said of it. But the world is not pretty nor is it real and you can count on almost everything being or becoming a lie. As it turned out (for me anyway), it was a lie... and there was SO much suffering! I've undergone other treatments in the past, but they didn't hold a candle to the pain I felt after this procedure. I could not speak or walk properly for days... I nearly choked to death twice on my own vomit in the little apartment where they left me after the procedure. I was throwing up some sort of orange liquid, I have no idea what it was. I had written other descriptions of that experience, but they are now lost; How they strapped me down, legs, arms, hands, feet ... and taped my eyes so they would not explode from their sockets ... the tubes down my throat ... tubes EVERYWHERE, above and below the waist. My arms were black from the times they must have missed the veins when trying to stick me with some device or another. The walls seemed dirty and "infested" ... like parts of Mexico are, if you've ever been there... and nobody spoke English, which made it all the more frightening for me. When I returned home I almost immediately became ill all over again... It was a bad experience, and this was the drawing of how it felt.

Mexico, April 1997

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