Very sick

Hey all, just wanted to give a brief update on my current state in Timor-Leste. The night between Saturday and Sunday, I kept waking up feeling nauseated. It wasn’t enough to get me out of bed, but enough to make me feel sorry for myself, blame something I ate, and curl up into the fetal position to quell the sickness. After an entire night of doing this, sometime around 9:00 or 10:00 on Sunday morning I got up, rushed to the bathroom, and proceeded to empty myself in pretty much all ways one can. It was drastic. I stumbled back to the room dripping sweat and climbed under the covers to recover. After that I had to stagger back to the bathroom for pretty much the same routine, minus the vomiting, every half hour or so. It wasn’t until around 1:00 that I finally convinced myself that I needed to go to the clinic.

                Carrick was hadn’t heard much from me since I’d pretty much only been in the bathroom and the bedroom up until that point, but the second he saw me he reached the same “Connor needs to go to the clinic” conclusion that I had. All of my joints were in pain and my skin was very sensitive to the touch. Basically it felt like an amplified flu at this point. The ride to the clinic was tricky, because I was really dizzy, sore, tired, and every pot hole we hit (which was relatively few because of Carrick’s awareness of my condition) sent serious pain the whole way up my spine.

                  We arrived at the clinic, walked inside and I was immediately seen by the doctor on staff. I described my symptoms and she stuck as thermometer in my armpit(?). While still listening to my long list of health issues, she pulled a small packet out of a box, took my hand, and began swabbing my finger with alcohol. She opened the small packet and pulled out a small white flattened piece of plastic about the size of a match box, only thinner. Still with the thermometer pitching a small vertical tent by my left shoulder the nurse took a sample of blood from the recently swabbed finger and put it on the matchbox like piece of white plastic. We talked a bit more about my symptoms and how I felt at that moment versus how I felt in the morning before she looked down, back up, and said you’re positive for malaria. Malaria, huh.

                After some language barrier hurdling (she didn’t speak great English) we figured out what we needed to do with what she was prescribing (mostly Carrick, I was running on a half a brain at this point) and headed back home. I had the rather ambitious task of not vomiting after taking my pills. This was very important as my medicine consisted of only two parts. One part was rehydration salts to be taken with one and a half liters of water (at least) per day for the next three days, which wasn’t really a problem. The second part, however, was a bit trickier as it required me to take EIGHT anti-malarial pills in one go. Not necessarily one mouthful mind you, but all at basically the same time. If I threw up, then I would need to return to the clinic to get more to try again. I waited for a few hours until I thought I was clear, ate a spoonful of oatmeal to test the waters (the food recommended to me by the doctor) and then took the dive. Fortunately I was able to keep everything down and because of that a mere three two days later I am feeling much better. I’ve still been dealing with profuse sweating, fatigue and general stinkiness, but the other, and more unpleasant, symptoms have pretty much stopped.  After hearing the horror stories of Carrick and Sharanya’s experiences with Malaria, I’m incredibly lucky that I got off as easily as I did.

                So that’s my update for you all, hopefully everyone stateside is healthy and happy!