Nasty Infection (Day 1)

On Monday night as I was writing the series of blog posts that is preceding this, I noticed that I was starting to feel weaker. I put it out of my mind and kept writing. I went to bed at 11:30, but by 1:30 AM, I still hadn't fallen asleep. Also, I was feeling somewhat sore and kinda hot, but also kinda cold (I thought that was a sunburn, but no area of my skin was particularly red). I spent most of the rest of the night running to the toilet, and tossing and turning. Soon, I was feeling somewhat dehydrated, and I noticed that my legs felt incredibly weak.

In the morning, I discovered that standing required an extraordinary amount of effort (although lying down led to slight dizziness). I came to the office and took refuge in our old house behind the office (it's still ours until someone else decides to rent it). There's a mattress in there, and so I curled up and caught quick naps in between my sprints to the toilet. Everyone was checking up on me, but mostly I just wanted to be alone (people are surprisingly open about one another's diarrhea here). After a couple of hours, I went to the store for some water (I brought Gatorade packets to fight the dehydration) and bananas (the normal banana places were closed, and I was moving slowly, so this was a twenty minute excursion). I ate half a banana and crashed again. In the afternoon, my co-worker Philemon drove me to the hospital to get checked out.

I kept losing my spot in the waiting room when I ran to the toilet, but after a while, I was consigned to curling up into a ball on the bench and a nice lady told me when it was my turn. I told the doctor what was going on and he took my blood pressure (slightly above normal) and my temperature (rather high). He sent me to the lab for blood, urine and stool samples. After some waiting the results came back: negative on malaria, but a pretty nasty infection. Recommendation: antibiotics, plenty of rest and lots of fluids (I declined his repeated offers of an IV drip for the dehydration). Philemon helped me fill my prescription while I waited in a hospital bed (my legs were having trouble sustaining me for five minutes at a time by this point).

I took my first dose of the medicine and some Tylenol on the ride home and grabbed some supplies (clean clothes, oranges, more Gatorade, sleeping bag, pillow) and returned to the house behind the office. I had depleted most of our water at the new house last night, so I figured it'd be better to stay somewhere with a reliable supply of water. I also helped Jodie fill some buckets to bring back to the new house (I could feel the medicine starting to take effect by this point). After that the sun had set and there was no electricity in the house, so I climbed into bed to try to sleep it off.

I'm hoping that this will only last a couple of days. The doctor suspects that I ate something bad, although Reuben and I had basically eaten the same things over the previous 72 hours, so I don't know what it could have been. I'm expecting somewhat dramatic weight loss (to be measured in belt loops, since I don't really have access to a scale), but otherwise, a stronger than ever immune system. One of the hardest parts will be missing Frisbee on Thursday :(