Bacteria, Giardia, or Worms?

Seems that I wouldn't last too long on Survivor Thailand. You wondered about the cooking? I finally got time to sit and type emails onto Carola's ancient laptop (black and white screen, windows 3.1 in German) because I was sick with stomach flu (diarrhea, fever, chills) for seven days. After five days of being sick and two days of taking a strong antibiotic along with Imodium, with no improvement, Carola and I went to the Cham Phae Hospital. Beforehand I used one of their DNA vials for a stool sample. Drove up to the hospital and saw an entire mob of people waiting - tired and spent looking, but at the same time interesting and full of life and experience. Many rural women in traditional dress of purple sarongs with geometric shapes and hair cut short. To help us out, Carola had her English speaking friend, Maun, from on of the cheapy gold jewelry stores in town, write down my symptoms in Thai. My Thai ID card turned out to be extremely useful for them to fill out a form for me, so now I have a hospital card. We were directed, given a sort of royal "show and tell" treatment, to a room that was bordered by partitioned rooms for examination. After waiting at various numbered rooms, one of which the doctor took one look at me and closed the door in my face, we were finally positioned in a row of four seats leading up to the door. The current patient was clearly visible to me. Even as they ushered me into the examination room, the doctor was still in discussion with another patient. After the prior patient left there were no introductions, I just handed my registration card to the Dr. and mumbled diarrhea 5 days, fever, headache. He had me lay down on a stained mattress and gruffly blurted "excuse me" as he poked at my stomach. No washing his hands or explaining what he was feeling for and found or didn't. This was all in fairly clear view of all the waiting patients who had no embarrassment over watching the whole time. I got down and he sort of patted at me and laughed as if to say "ha ha funny farang (foreigner) only has watery diarrhea and thinks is a problem." So, he told me to continue taking the antibiotics, wrote me a prescription for aspirin and something for pain and sent me to door 20. They took my stool sample after some confusion and embarrassment on my part of having people open an envelope and look at my sh!t. As we waited they looked at the sample under what looked like microscopes from a high-school biology classroom. Found nothing. So they conferred, walked me over to a table and showed me a long cotton swab. And this means? After many directions in Thai from three different people, I finally got a key word "insert." Fine. I found the bathroom, took the swab, and have absolutely no confidence that they will find anything. They told me they will mail me the results. Carola tried to explain we would come back for the results, but they were adamant about mailing. So, it should take them three days to get the results, and probably another week to get the mail at the sanctuary headquarters and a few days after that for the mail to reach me. Basically, I learned nothing. The entire hospital bill (including prescriptions which they gave me there) was something like 65 baht -- less than $2. The whole hospital experience was March 11. On the 12th I took one tablet of Mebendazole for worms. Today, the 14th is the first day that I have eaten regular food. Before this I ate only bread and rice and bananas, and before that, nothing but electrolyte powder drink. But, I do feel better today, and no more diarrhea. I hope to go back out in the forest tomorrow, because it has been six days now that they have had to rearrange the schedule without me working. The most annoying thing is that I have no idea the source of the problem. Could have been any of a number of too much bad bacteria, or giardia, or worms. But, so far so good today...