Malaria

Monday night, I woke up freezing cold, shaking, and due to some serious back pains, unable to find a comfortable position to sleep in. Damn. I thought back to my last trip in a Malaria endemic zone – two months living on the Nile river in Uganda, camping out in tents, spending the evenings outside, and to be honest, not really taking a lot of precautions against the ruthless mosquitos. I never got sick. I couldn’t believe that here I was in urban Kimbe, in my well-screened house that I am inside by 5pm every evening, with the classic symptoms of a case of malaria. I suppose it was a good wakeup call to be a bit less complacent. I spent the morning gathering up what strength I had, knowing that once I managed to get that essential blood smear, I could retreat to the comforts of my home and bed. However, the clinic at the hospital was closed, and as we were told, had been so for a few months. The VCT, where Ellen knew the sister that might do a slide, was locked up, as was the Pathology lab. We even wandered over to one of the private clinics, but it turned out that Dr was out of town on a trip to Bialla. Finally we got to another private clinic (with for the record, an excellent physician), got the blood confirmation, an injection, some prescription meds, a bit of comfort food (cereal and ingredients for grilled cheese), and (finally) made my way home to my own bed. My neighbour Winnie was kind enough to bring over some ‘kulau’ – young coconuts from which you can drink the water directly, and which are traditionally used to help speed the recovery process. Whether it was the kulau, the meds or the many get-well vibes from friends and family back home, I don’t know, but I was ecstatic to be relatively symptom-free within 2 days! Who would have thought that was possible? Anyways the whole experience ended up serving as a wild-card to add some excitement to my day, and as I mentioned, a good wake-up call to take more precautions, especially as we will be carrying out a lot of outreach trips to very rural areas where there are no doctors and limited medical facilities. Not very strategic places to get sick!