The second thing you need to know about Malaria is that it isn’t a sexually transmitted disease, unless of course you consider swapping bodily fluids with a mosquito, sex. Evidently some of my wife’s friends missed this point when they sent her their condolences and in hushed tones ask, “How are you doing with all of this.”
When I came down with Malaria "from sharing a dirty mosquito" in Northern Uganda I had no idea what the symptoms really were or that it would take two weeks to feel the effects, which in my travel world was a short eternity ago. Because I was travelling to Africa so frequently I had quit taking the preventative drug because at some point the danger of living on the drugs out ways the risk of Malaria. Where I went wrong was in not knowing the symptoms.
The first flu like symptoms hit me late on a Friday night after a returning from my oldest son’s high school football game to a yard and trees draped in toilet paper. My wife and I decided it was better to clean it up for him than to wait for the dew to set in and make a real mess. In the middle of cleaning I started complaining about chills and not feeling good, which solicited from my wife our family mantra, “Buck up and quit being a wimp”.
The second round of symptoms struck the next morning, but since being a wimp was already ruled out by my wife I set off for the Sierra foothills with my youngest son to go fishing. Something I had promised to do. By time I got home I tumbled into bed shaking like a leaf.
Round three hit the next morning as we were headed out the door to church. To this I received the, “If that’s the kind of dad you want to be go ahead and stay home” speech. I stayed home. Not that I wanted to be that kind of dad, but no one wants a sweating, chilling, shaking, man sharing a pew with them and I certainly didn’t want to be there in my condition.
Malaria symptoms hit every ten to twelve hours. In between you start feeling good like you’re whipping the flu, so you get up, shower, shave and try to forge on. Then it hits you again.
Round four struck as we were preparing to go to another sporting event for one of my four boys, I can’t remember which one or what sport because by now I wasn’t right in the head. Again choosing to be “one of those dad’s” I stayed home.
In our family if you’re sick don’t expect chicken soup to be delivered to your room anytime soon. You just get banished to your room and if by some chance you prove to be strong enough to rejoin the pack, then more power to you.
On day four, in between rounds of sweating and freezing I drug myself to the office to answer emails before setting out to driving 450 miles to San Diego. My colleagues took one look at me, which was one more look than my family had given me, and sent me home.
At home I argued that the drive south would do me good and I would probably complete my recovery “from the flu” somewhere between Bakersfield and Castaic. I was seriously not thinking right. I had also convinced myself that the reason my pee was bright orange was because I was living entirely on orange Gatorade in an attempt to flush this nasty flu from my system. (A point not lost by my friends who later delivered a huge jug to my hospital room) My wife sent me to bed with the words, “You don’t look to good”. Evidently she finally looked at me. This got her thinking and researching which is her specialty.
Next thing I knew I was being rushed to the hospital by her while being briefed that I had every symptom of Malaria except “coma and death come quickly”.
The hospital was another problem. No matter how many times we told them I had Malaria they refused to believe us and placed the both of us in an isolated room deep in the bowels of the hospital with a big vent to suck out all of our germs. This was just to occupy us while they called the CDC who still checks on me periodically. They wouldn’t even feed us they just stuck the food outside the door and ran. They even had the audacity to tell me after tests that they had ruled out malaria.
By coincidence (God’s way of working anonymously) there was a Ghanaian doctor in the hospital that had trained in one of the hospitals I had been working at in Kumasi, Ghana. When they finally brought him to see me (This I remember as well as I remember the hallucinations of cockroaches dressed in nurse outfits), he looked at me from the door way and said, “You have Malaria. I’ll get you fixed up in no time.”
If you’re one of those who thinks there are too many foreign doctors and nurses you might want to think again. Sooner or later you may come down with something that only they can recognize. Thank God for foreign doctors.
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