As sure as the swallows arrive every summer, as sure as the price of a cup of cappuccino rises like the summer sun and the roads become the largest parking lot on the Adriatic, I will get my traditional summer ailment.

I seem to be a magnet for anything and everything that infects the human body. I am like a child at kindergarten picking up every runny nose or upset stomach. If someone sneezes in Mokosica then within hours, I’ll get a cold!

And this year is no different! Is it that my body just doesn’t react well to heat? Is my northern European DNA and immune system aimed at fighting cold and wet weather? Well, it is true I am not a great lover of heat and sunshine, but surely that doesn’t mean that my body is a welcome party for all bugs flying around.

“Uff, I don’t feel that well, my stomach is killing me,” I said to my wife a few days ago.

I had a feeling that I had swallowed a brick! My stomach felt like a balloon ready to explode. And explode it did. It exploded everywhere.

“You look like as white as a sheet and your face looks like you’ve been swimming, your soaking,” answered my wife. And in a flash a thermometer was stuffed into my mouth. “Get in bed! 38.2! Have a shower! Eat soup!” I didn’t know which to do first. But it was true I felt like death warmed up.

Within minutes my mother-in-law was on the phone. I got the copy/paste instructions that my wife had just given me. Now, normally the “get well soon” advice from my mother-in-law involves Rakia, a magical liquid that cures all evils, but this time she just said “rotavirus.” Whereas many people turn to Google for medical advice (wrongly) I turn to the “Dubrovnik Google” – my mother-in-law.

Any word that ends with virus isn’t promising

My first thought was what the hell is rotavirus, I’d never heard of it. It didn’t sound promising. Any word that ends with virus isn’t promising.

“Rotavirus commonly causes severe, watery diarrhoea and vomiting,” read Wikipedia. And it wasn’t wrong. It also said that it was highly contagious. Having said that I was the only member of the family who had caught it.

Like I said if there is a virus or bug going round the city then you can bet that my body will be a host. And reading on my suspicions were confirmed as rotavirus is very common with younger children as they pick it up in the classroom. I knew my body was still in a time warp and open to all childhood sicknesses.

Any movement outside of a few metres of the nearest toilet was high risk. Toilet paper was rolling like Niagara Falls. Anything I put in my body came out in a matter of minutes. I was basically a living express conduit for food. Think of rain falling on a roof as the food and drink I consume, well my body is like the gutter leading from the rooftop to the ground.

And to stay hydrated I am downing all sorts of liquids. “The pharmacist gave me this advice and told me that you need to drink this powder mixed with water six times a day,” said my wife after consulting with a friendly local pharmacist.

To say that this medicine was disgusting would be a massive understatement. Imagine cold chicken soup mixed with a rotten banana that left your mouth feeling like you’d just eaten sand and you are somewhere close. It looked like drinking mud. I probably would have preferred to drink mud it would have had a nicer flavour.

My normally hectic summer daily schedule was cancelled. I was out of action until further notice. Instead of my usual ten different locations a day, I was stuck with two, my bed or the toilet. And indeed as I am writing this very text I am still infected. I’m not in bed, but yes within sight of the nearest toilet. “Oh, the toilet becomes a throne, where one must sit, and sit alone, an endless stream, no mercy shown, an unwelcome presence clearly known,” is a poem I wrote whilst sitting on my throne.

Ok, enough from me, I need to be in another place rather quickly! 

Read more Englishman in Dubrovnik…well, if you really want to

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the author
Mark Thomas (aka Englez u Dubrovniku) is the editor of The Dubrovnik Times. He was born and educated in the UK and moved to live in Dubrovnik in 1998. He works across a whole range of media, from a daily radio show to TV and in print. Thomas is fluent in Croatian and this column is available in Croatia on the website – Dubrovnik Vjesnik