When Katie Simon was 18 years old, she decided to take a gap year between high school and college to travel the Silk Road. It had been a dream of hers since childhood to backpack the region, sample new foods, and meet other travelers.
Simon wasn’t too worried about what would happen during the trip; she was a seasoned traveler and had already visited over 60 different countries. At this point, there was little that could faze her while on the road.
Her Silk Road trip began in Kazakhstan. Only a few days had passed before she began feeling ill. Simon threw up every time after she ate or drank, and she blamed dehydration for worsening the symptoms of what she assumed was just bad food poisoning.
But the symptoms never abated. Simon continued to throw up, her heartburn constantly pained her, and after several months of constantly vomiting, she was developing throat and sinus infections.
Even as she suffered from these ailments, Simon persisted on her journey across the Silk Road and completed the trek seven months after she first set out – all while battling a strange illness that doctors in Kazakhstan and Israel were struggling to diagnose.
When Simon returned to the States, her American doctors and specialists were hitting the same wall. They couldn’t figure out what was ailing Simon, so they simply wrote it off as “typical travel sickness.”
But Simon knew better, and she continued to visit more and more doctors – none of whom could diagnose her.
It was only a full year later, as Simon was finishing her gap year and moving into her dorms at NYU, that her gastroenterologist called her with the news.
“Don’t look this up on Wikipedia,” were the first words the nurse said to Simon, “You were tested positive for Yersinia.”
Simon was on Wikipedia before the call was over.
She’d contracted Yersinia pestis, the same bacteria that had wiped out a third of the population in Europe during the 14th century. Simon had the Black Death.
The gastroenterologist suspected Simon had eaten contaminated food or suffered from a flea bite. Either of the two causes then led her to become infected in, miraculously, only the upper half of her gastrointestinal system. If the infection had spread further, Simon wouldn’t have survived.
Though the bacteria were, thankfully, cleared with proper antibiotics, Simon struggled with the side effects and symptoms of the Black Death for many months following. She had to follow a restricted diet not only to keep her digestive system balanced, but also to help reduce the inflammation, erosions, and ulcers in her esophagus, stomach, and duodenum.
Now, two-and-a-half years after Simon came down with the bubonic plague, she’s finally symptom-free and can return to her normal life and less-restricted diet without concern.
