Dengue fever.
Up until now, I have only heard dengue fever in passing and never gave it a thought.It was the evening of Thursday, I had come back from work and was ready to make the best of what was left of the day . Sleep time was 11:00pm and so I had roughly 4 hours. The only thing hindering me now was this headache behind my eyes. It made every eye roll painful and more energy sapping. There was no way , I was going to get anything done with this headache. So I had to put everything away and call it a night. In the morning, the headache had worsened, I thought I was having a fever and so took paracetamol and did all the fever rituals of putting a cloth on your head, water therapy and basically all other things you read on internet blogs. The fever didn’t subside, it instead grew worse. I started having back pain, muscle pains and an immediate loss of appetite. It became difficult to stand on my two feet or even put clothes on. I knew something was wrong , so I went to the drug store and just bought some antibiotics to put out anything that was making me feel this way and decided against going out to work , shelving all my plans for the day.
6 hours later, it had become a full blown sickness, I started throwing up everything that I had eaten or not eaten. I was coughing, the joint and muscle pains has become excruciating and my temperature was literally over a 100. I knew I had to see the doctor and so I did, and he immediately requested that I take a blood test while giving me new sets of antibiotics which were way stronger than the ones I had been taking before then.
The results of the blood test came and dengue fever was detected. Dengue fever test was carried out because in Asia, which I am at the time, it is a very common fever among people especially children. It is caused by a mosquito bite and up until 2015 would have no vaccine. It turned out that I had a 9.6 aggregate which was totally mild but still made me feel like I was knocking on heaven’s doors. 0 to 9 is negative and 9-11 is equivocal which is mild and 11 above is positive and very deadly. I was among the 100 million cases of dengue fever annually in the world and it was hell.
My blood count was greatly affected and my platelets had halved in number, I immediately lost about 11 pounds and only had enough appetite to down a glass of fruit juice. At this point it was clear that the body would have to fight the fever in it’s own way but Asian doctors always prescribe antibiotics just in case. I didn’t take all the antibiotics I was prescribed because I believe I have an antibiotics threshold. I went ahead to take lemon water, herbal extracts especially payaya leaves boiled in water and wait, for my healing to come. It lasted a week after which I started regaining strength and a second blood test revealed that my platelets were on the rise.
In the process of recovery, I kept feeling fluid in my muscles, I was told it was fluid leakage from the capillaries, it was very painful but lasted only a few days. I also started itching all over especially under my feet. I didn't however have any rashes since my fever was the mild kind.
The road to recovery was long and boring and it took about 2 to 3 weeks to fully recover. Within those 2 weeks, nothing mattered. Finances, life goals and dreams, love relationships and work, nothing. The only thing that mattered at that time was health. Health is indeed wealth.
Ironically, there is a musical band who call themselves Dengue Fever
, I wonder if their music would make you have a headache, joint pains, fluid leakage, weakness, stomach pain and puke all over the place.
, I wonder if their music would make you have a headache, joint pains, fluid leakage, weakness, stomach pain and puke all over the place.
