So, most people who are reading this probably know that I’ve been pretty sick lately. Not the “eeh I have the flu” kind of sick (though I did have the flu a few weeks ago) but SICK. I guess if you want to have a lot of fun in a tropical country you’re obviously taking risks. Back in January I went sailing with my youth group. We had a really awesome time. That said, swimming in bilharzia-riddled Lake Victoria and accidentally consuming about half the lake water is definitely a risk.
I was looking out for signs of Bilharzia after the prescribed 6 weeks needed for it to have an effect. If you don’t know what Bilharzia is, it’s basically worm type things that live in snail feces in the water. They burrow in through your legs and feet in bad water, find a nice, comfy home in your blood, and lay a bunch of eggs. Then you get sick. Or something like that… Anyways, once I was better from the flu I still wasn’t feeling great. The night of prom (the day after my fever went away) I was dizzy. The next day I woke up with hives.
Monday morning I woke up with HIVES. Like, big, 2 inch in diameter, ¼ inch thick itchy red bumps that all ran together to form a big red puffy itching mass on my arms and stomach. Ugh. So my mom took me to the doctor, who put me on a steroid. Of course, over the next few days the hives kept coming back, spreading to my legs, and very, very itch; and of course the prednisone made the left side of my face swell up and get tingly, and the next day my arms swelled up. THAT was fun. The picture is of my hives. After they had gone WAY down. You get the idea :P
Thankfully we had a week and a half off starting that Wednesday. Of course, it was the day before I went back to school that I realized I had no energy and was a bit nauseous (and no, I didn’t wonder if I was pregnant. I knew that one would be a NO!). So, the next day my mom took me to the doctor to get tested for bilharzias. They did two tests, both were very positive. The good news is it’s easily treated with two doses of pills three hours apart from each other. The bad and gross news: if you’re sick, the pills hatch all the eggs in your body, which makes you incredibly dizzy and can bring on a low grade fever if you’re really sick. So that Tuesday was lots of fun!
Sick, Sicker, and Hospital Tests
Wednesday night, though, I woke up in the middle of the night with a 103.3 (or 39.6) degree fever. That was definitely NOT from the pills. My mom kept me home the next day for obvious reasons, at which point I figured out that the stomach pain, nausea, severe muscle pain and fevers were not just from bilharzia or the flu. Great. So my mom talked to a family friend/colleague at the Uni who told us to go to this one clinic/hospital. So, the next day, that’s where we went. After checking me out (no, not in that way) the doctor sent me down to the lab for all kinds of blood tests, a chest x-ray and an abdominal scan. None of this was particularly fun, including talking to a 30 year old male lab tech about abstinence and purity while wearing a gown cover-up thing and he x-rayed my chest. It wasn’t like I wanted to talk about that, but he asked if I was pregnant, and when I said definitely not it turned into this big thing.
Then they did an abdominal ultra-sound. I did not take particularly kindly to the icky goo the woman squirted all over my stomach. This was especially special when she scanned one part of my stomach and it hurt really bad. She made the comment that something wasn’t quite right, but wouldn’t tell me what. That was freaky. So, eventually it turned out my liver was enlarged. That’s generally NOT a good thing, but it’s not uncommon with something like this. So that explained why that part of my tummy was soooo tender and painful. After talking to the doctor again, we finally figured out what was going on. It turned out I had typhoid. Lovely.
The Dreaded IV
I went to school on Friday, took antibiotics, and still was not feeling a lot better. I could stand fairly straight without falling over half the time, and I thought I was getting better. We had Monday and Tuesday off, and then Wednesday two periods at school and I went back to the doctor. Now this is where it got even more special. We did more blood tests. It turned out my blood pressure had dropped a fair bit (below what’s normal and good) and my white blood cell count was pretty high (a lot higher than normal and healthy).
The doctor diagnosed a systemic infection of some sort. Ugh. After that, she decided I need IV (drip) antibiotics. She told us to do this one really strong kind so that whatever it was would be totally killed. That meant IV antibiotics twice a day for five days. She was going to put me in the hospital so I could get the IV’s, but the nice thing about the University is having people around with various skills. One of our family friends is an American ICU nurse who was more than happy to come up early and late to hook me up to my IV. So, they put the canula in my arm (a plastic tuby thing that goes in your vein and has more plastic on top for the IV tube to plug into. Ouch. That was seriously annoying. And I had to keep it in for 5 days.
That night our friend, Karen, came up, mixed up my IV plastic bottle thing that was full of glucose solution (water with sugar) and put my antibiotic powder stuff in it. Then we hung the IV bottle from a picture hanger with some plastic wires, she flushed my arm (put saline through the canula thingy) and hooked my IV into it, and an hour later when the bottle was empty came back to flush it again and unplug me from the picture hanger. This was the routine every 12 hours for the next 5 days. Needless to say I was not going to school at that point J. And this picture is of me on the IV below. That was... special
Of course, because nothing ever goes easily, my vein got “tired” according to Karen, started leaking IV fluid into my arm (ow!) and got irritated and painful. So, after an interesting evening of two failed impalements of my arm involving a lot of moving a canula needle around trying to find another vein (again, ow) we moved the canula.
By Monday night I was feeling a little better, and the doctor’s tests on Tuesday showed that I was getting better. Of course, I made the mistake of showing my face at school for two periods on Tuesday, during which time I got yelled at by 3 teachers and my friend Lea for coming to school when I should be resting and recovering, was told to rest a lot by 3 other teachers to stay home and rest. So I did. Then I went for 4 periods on Thursday and stayed home yesterday.
And now I’m here. I’m getting a lot better, though still lacking energy. Apparently it’s supposed to take several months for me to be totally normal. So, this was my first major experience with being really sick with tropical sicknesses. I could probably do without another one for quite a while…. Anyways, thanks for reading this. And if you want some advice: don’t get Typhoid, Bilharzia, and another weird infection simultaneously. : -)
