Thanksgiving with a side of Dengue...

Hey Everyone!  Happy Thanksgiving.  Hope everyone has had a great few days off and will be enjoying the weekend with close family and friends in the company of loved ones!!  I had great plans this Thanksgiving to go and spend some time with other volunteers in another department here in Guatemala.  We have not had the ability to see anyone within our training group yet and this was going to be our first chance to do so.  


Monday was a good day, my project specialist and APCD (program director) came to visit as they were passing through.  It was good to meet up with them and they took me out to lunch.  While they were here, I was able to get another house approved and am looking forward to moving this weekend into a new house with a family.  My housing situation is just not the best for me right now and I think that this new house with this family will provide me with a little more social interaction on a daily basis that will not only improve me Spanish level but also just be a better all around situation.  


A weird thing happened that day, I wasn’t feeling too well and did not sleep the night before.  Sunday I remember having a slight headache and not feeling well all around.  I had gone to bed early and tried getting some extra sleep to shake what I had.  Monday came along and nothing much better except every hour the headache got worse, and my joints started hurting.  My muscles started hurting.  It was not good.  I was not ready for the flu.  I through seriously really?!  Why now. Oh well, that night I came home a little early talked to my brother online and told him what I felt and just was miserable.  I had a little dinner and some hot cocoa to make me feel a little better, to remind me a little of home and tried to go to bed by 8pm.  I woke up and took 800mg of Ibuprofen around 9pm and went back to bed.  Then the rest of the night was horrible at best.  I woke up tossed and turned with calofrios (hot and colds) where I was so cold that I was violently shivering and then the next minute I was sweating heavily.  This was a long night. Battling nausea stomach everything…. not to mention I had unbearable pain running through my back, down my spine into my groin joints and legs.  Every muscle in my body was just sore to move and I had not even been doing anything.  At 3am, I thought to myself, we have to do something, and something fast.  I couldn’t make it out of my bed and to the phone so I just laid there and did my best to do deep breathing and to get control of whatever was happening.  I somehow made it back to half consciousness or death feeling and woke up at 7am. 

 I called the Peace Corps doctor and told him my symptoms and told me to get to the hospital as fast as I could.  I did.  It was a nice long windy bus ride down the mountains here to Quezaltenango (Xela) (pronounced Shay-lah) and then as I was somewhat delusional still I got out at the bus terminal.  This was my first time in Xela and I had no clue where the hospital was, or where I was supposed to go, or which direction to head.  I looked around and started walking.  After about a 10-15 min walk I finally asked someone in the store where the hospital was and showed here the address.  She told me the ‘other direction and very far’.  At this point I had begun to feel a nice itchy sensation, burning almost where every article of clothing touched my skin, and I just realized that I had walked in the wrong direction for 15 mins.  GREAT.  I have no idea where I am, and no idea what the hell is wrong with me.  After talking to a few more people and what felt like 10 hours, I finally just got in a cab and had the driver take me to the hospital which was about a mile away. 

It was him...I swear

 I get to the hospital and was seen right away as the doctors are waiting for me and PC has notified them about my coming.  After taking sample of everything and talking to them they tell me they are going to show me a room.  I tell them a room for what?  I tell them I am hoping to get back to my site tonight, I was hoping I would be able to just get some medicine and get back.  Then a quick reply of ‘your spending the night’  SWEET.  I thought.  I was shown my room, had some nurses fish around for some veins for an IV and then just started at the walls.  The doctor came in a few times, and the blur of the day soon turned into night.  The next morning, I talked to the doctor and the test came back all negative and they told me with my symptoms and where I live, I had dengue.  I knew dengue was from mosquitos but that was about it.  It is common and people get it but I didn’t know it was like this.  Hey it could be worse.  I know what most of you are thinking but seriously, it all retrospect, things could be a lot worse.  I am still alive, I still have my limbs. I still can function….for the most part.  


So the day passes and it is about 2pm.  I ask the doctor when I would be able to leave that day.  She gives me a little smile and says, sometime tomorrow….perhaps.  Ha, another night.  I just wanted to go home so badly.  I didnt have anything with me.  Luckily I had a book in my bag that I had forgotten to take out and pounced on it like it was the only book in the world.  At this time, I was going nuts. Just laying in a third world country, and going to spend Thanksgiving, one of only two holidays that the PC gives us as free travel days.  I got to use mine to hang at the hospital with dengue and a side of Salmonella: the double whammy.  They found out I had salmonella too.  Oh man was I in for it.  Yesterday when I woke up….ugggh….I was just miserable.  I was still sore, my lower back at felt like Mike Tyson had given me about 15 rounds of his prime and I was just chilling in the hospital bed.  Ill be honest.  It was a really really low point.  I was depressed.  I didn’t know when I was going to be let out of the hospital.  I did not have anything to do.  I just was a mess, alone, sick in a foreign country which is never a good combination.  


Finally I escaped.  I got back late last night.  After feeling fresh air for the first time in three days and learning how to walk again was a great boost to me mentally.  But after the short 2 hour bus ride home I started feeling horrible again.  I was scared.  But the comforting thing was, when I was walking back into town, people were asking me where I had been.  People were just saying hi.  That they hadn’t seen me in a while, that there, the human interaction of my town here but a little smile on my face.  I got home, talked to my parents on the phone filled them in on what happened and wished them a Happy Thanksgiving.  I took a nice bucket bath, changed my clothes that I had been living in the last three days and went to bed!  This morning I woke up and felt a little better and the headache has lessened considerably but I have read on the Dengue symptoms that it can come back after a day of feeling better.  So I hope hope hope hope, that tomorrow I feel awesome and not anything like I have been feeling.  


I am fine! Seriously I am.  There is no need to worry about me or feel bad for me.  It is just part of what goes on here in the lives of people here on a daily basis.  I feel incredibly fortunate to have had access to medical care where most of the people here in the country do not.  I am lucky to have family and friends to support me through this journey, and I thank you for being a good support group.  I will keep you all updated as these next few days pass.  Happy Thanksgiving!!