Malaria woes
Well, it seems that the malaria drug I took has been working. Thank goodness for Artemos and the Chinese military! Now I know what it's like to have malaria - never again! I seriously wanted someone to put me out of my misery during my all-night/all-morning puking bouts. This is an edited version of the e-mail I sent to Geoff and my parents after leaving the hospital in Nkoranza:
Yesterday morning I went out with Charles my research assistant as usual to collect samples. Towards the end of the collection I started to get this piercing headache which I thought might be due to the heat. Anyways, I went back to my room and lay down for a few hours, had some chicken soup for lunch, and took a couple of Aspirin. From 12-3 pm I was working with Effia on processing the leaf samples and the headache didn't go away and I started to get some nausea. Took a couple of peptobismol and rested some more. By evening I was feeling even worse and I finished up the chicken soup for dinner, took 2 ibuprofen, and went to bed early.
By 1 am I was dry heaving because I had nothing left in my stomach to throw up. This continued all night and all morning and I couldn't even keep water down. Between my puking bouts I tried calling Geoff on our BFMS cellphone but I couldn't get through. I was hysterical and emotional by this point because I didn't know what I had, only that I was completely miserable. I took my temp several times in the evening and in the morning and I was fluctuating from a slight fever (37.7) to feeling really cold (36.2). The medication I took did nothing for me - the headache and the nausea persisted. By morning my symptoms had not lessened and I had decided that I wanted to go to a clinic/hospital to get a diagnosis. Pascale and Bright had an appt in some neighbouring communities and they were using Nana Fiema's (chief of Fiema) car. They said they would do that first and then ask Nana if they could use the car to take me to the hospital in Nkoranza.
By this time we had decided this wasn't a simple food poisoning thing - the piercing headache, dizziness, weakness, fluctuating temp, and vomiting all pointed towards malaria. So by 11 am I was lying in the car with the driver, Pascale, and Bright. Took a lot of will power not the puke in the car on the way to Nkoranza. Got to the hospital and they took my vitals and sent me to the lab for a blood test. It took an hour so we went to the guesthouse that I stayed at last year where my friend Charity works. Nice to have some friendly faces and lots of support from Julie, Pascale, and Bright. An hour later we got the results back from the blood test and they were negative for malaria. The problem with malaria is that it might be too early for it to show up on the blood test so I was prescribed malarial drugs in any case. The other option was typhoid fever but I have a vaccination for that.
So I'm sitting hear at the internet cafe trying to distract myself from the pain in my head and resting before we get back on the bumpy road to BFMS. I need to keep down the 4 malaria medication pills and the 2 painkillers they gave to me. I was proud that I managed to swallow all 4 capsules! I will be fine in a few days I think. The pain comes in waves, sometimes I feel fine, other times I feel pretty bad. The ironic thing is that malaria usually has an incubation period of 2 weeks. So this means that the first mosquitoes to bite me in Ghana gave me malaria!
Yesterday morning I went out with Charles my research assistant as usual to collect samples. Towards the end of the collection I started to get this piercing headache which I thought might be due to the heat. Anyways, I went back to my room and lay down for a few hours, had some chicken soup for lunch, and took a couple of Aspirin. From 12-3 pm I was working with Effia on processing the leaf samples and the headache didn't go away and I started to get some nausea. Took a couple of peptobismol and rested some more. By evening I was feeling even worse and I finished up the chicken soup for dinner, took 2 ibuprofen, and went to bed early.
By 1 am I was dry heaving because I had nothing left in my stomach to throw up. This continued all night and all morning and I couldn't even keep water down. Between my puking bouts I tried calling Geoff on our BFMS cellphone but I couldn't get through. I was hysterical and emotional by this point because I didn't know what I had, only that I was completely miserable. I took my temp several times in the evening and in the morning and I was fluctuating from a slight fever (37.7) to feeling really cold (36.2). The medication I took did nothing for me - the headache and the nausea persisted. By morning my symptoms had not lessened and I had decided that I wanted to go to a clinic/hospital to get a diagnosis. Pascale and Bright had an appt in some neighbouring communities and they were using Nana Fiema's (chief of Fiema) car. They said they would do that first and then ask Nana if they could use the car to take me to the hospital in Nkoranza.
By this time we had decided this wasn't a simple food poisoning thing - the piercing headache, dizziness, weakness, fluctuating temp, and vomiting all pointed towards malaria. So by 11 am I was lying in the car with the driver, Pascale, and Bright. Took a lot of will power not the puke in the car on the way to Nkoranza. Got to the hospital and they took my vitals and sent me to the lab for a blood test. It took an hour so we went to the guesthouse that I stayed at last year where my friend Charity works. Nice to have some friendly faces and lots of support from Julie, Pascale, and Bright. An hour later we got the results back from the blood test and they were negative for malaria. The problem with malaria is that it might be too early for it to show up on the blood test so I was prescribed malarial drugs in any case. The other option was typhoid fever but I have a vaccination for that.
So I'm sitting hear at the internet cafe trying to distract myself from the pain in my head and resting before we get back on the bumpy road to BFMS. I need to keep down the 4 malaria medication pills and the 2 painkillers they gave to me. I was proud that I managed to swallow all 4 capsules! I will be fine in a few days I think. The pain comes in waves, sometimes I feel fine, other times I feel pretty bad. The ironic thing is that malaria usually has an incubation period of 2 weeks. So this means that the first mosquitoes to bite me in Ghana gave me malaria!
posted by Avatamsaka Monastery Choir at 5:34 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Ev!
I'm glad you're feeling better. It makes me sad that you had to go through it. We should send you some vitamin B12 pills? or some other B# pills. Apparently they repel mosquitos, but who really knows? :P
Anyways, I hope all is well with you! and dont get malaria again! We Miss You!
-Kim
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