Hit By Malaria

Hi everyone!

Now that it is over, let me tell you about the time I got malaria... haha

Last Monday I woke up feeling a little slow, with a queasy feeling in my body. It had been a cold night (by Ghanaian standards), so I thought it was just a bad few hours of sleep. Little did I know!

At DAI, I was having a hard time concentrating and felt unusually demotivated for working. As I didn't feel better and wasn't much help in the office, I decided to go home a couple of hours earlier, to get some rest and get on with my week.
Ohhh boy, after a quick nap, I woke up with a headache and ... a fever! haha
fever + headache = malaria (always, or so says Mr. Kumi).
I texted Yaw and told him I wanted to get tested in the morning, to then see how we should proceed.

Early the next day, I felt increasingly more sluggish, so I hopped on a taxi (trotro just would not cut it) and went with Clara to a clinic nearby. A quick prick on the thumb, a few drops of blood and 15 minutes later, the result came in: malaria.

Now, my parents completely freaked out when I told them, through a text message. Afterall, in Sao Paulo malaria is just not something you encounter often. It is portrayed as a killer disease, and rightfully so, but only when not medicated correctly. (aha, this is where it gets interesting)

Clara accompanied me to a hospital, where after some waiting, a doctor quickly prescribed me the usual malaria medication.The doctor himself was actually on his third day of treatment, having recently contracted malaria.
This is pretty common in Ghana, where I believe it is safe to say almost every adult has had the disease at some point. Yaw, for example, has gotten it twice this semester.
 After buying all the drugs, I went home for some rest and to begin the five-day treatment.

The thing is, after 24 hours I was feeling worse, not better. I had completely lost my appetite, could barely walk, and my head spun at any attempt to move.
I did not know if this was normal, how the medicine was supposed to work, if it was safe to stop or to continue taking the drugs. Despite constant support from my Ghanaian family, Yaw and Clara, I still felt like I was in the dark, unexperienced in a disease that seemed so common in this country.

On Thursday morning, Yaw picked me up in a taxi and took me to see another doctor, one of his personal friends. All I remember up to getting to his office was how much the car was shaking - my organs were obviously not in the right places at the time.
After listing symptoms, the doctor quickly told us the medicine prescribed was the issue. Apparently, there is an enzyme that processes it, and some people (myself included) do not have high enough levels of it in their system. Why I was not tested for this possibility still puzzles me, but at the time all I thought about was getting something in my body that would make me feel better.

New medicine in hand, Yaw dropped me off at home, where I slept through the day. Efua was kindly bringing in chicken soup and orange juice in every meal, and making sure I wasn't feeling too bad. Even my sister, Abenaa, dropped by just to see if I was feeling better. Mr. Kumi was also very attentive to my symptoms, and guaranteed me he will buy more of the new medicine so I can take it "whenever you get a headache in the village. Headache in Ghana is always malaria."

Friday was the day of our excursion to the Volta Region. I was still not in conditions to travel, so Clara came over and we watched TV from 9am to 2pm. By then the side effects were finally becoming mild, and the hours were more about resting than just muscling through the nausea.
Clara and I eventually joined the group on Saturday, and this weekend I will blog about our fun excursion.

Honestly, malaria itself was not so bad. What was really terrible was not knowing I couldn't take the regular kind of medicine, which provided some two very upsetting days. Also, missing almost five days of work felt incredibly counter-productive, while also I couldn't make sense of any books I tried to read. (HUGE thanks to Ryan, by the way, for getting me a copy of Atlas Shrugged, I'm psyched dude!)


As Carla, my boss at DAI, said, "malaria is inevitable here, and it toughens you up". I do feel stronger now, but I am also pretty sure on passing on extra mosquito repellent from now on.

Thanks to everyone from the Bridge Year Program for helping so much with speeding my recovery!

Up and running,

Henrique