April 6

So, it's been several days since I have written and I've had quite a few emails questioning why that is...here's why...I have had typhoid and malaria. 

Before I begin my tale of horror I should probably describe what typhoid is and how it is spread.  I think most people had a good understanding of malaria, but typhoid is not quite as common.  In the medical books Typhoid is described as being transfered by the fecal-to-oral route.  Typhoid lives in the intestinal tract and a person can catch it by drinking dirty water, shaking hands, handling money, or countless other ways.  I'm sure that I caught it at the hospital by caring for the typhoid patients.  Typhoid can cause a wide range of symptoms.  Some are as mild as depression to as severe as bowel perforation that requires surgery.  Most of the time it presents with vomiting and diarrhea.  It can take weeks for a person to fully recover from a bad case of typhoid.  Thankfully we don't see this disease in the U.S. because of good sanitation standards.  This is a disease that I never want to see (or have) again.

My typhoid encounter...

I woke at 6 am on Friday morning feeling ill and had to make an immediate run to the bathroom.  Not only did my stomach hurt but I felt achy all over and light headed.  I felt that I had better consult the expert and went to find Dr. Jean.  She suggested that I start taking anti-malarial tablets right away and just to be safe to take Ciprofloxacin in case I had typhoid.  I did all of this in the hopes that I would start to feel better soon and wouldn't get sick...wrong!  Dr. Jean went on to the hospital and I stayed at home.  By 9am I started vomiting, and I'm not talking about just a little bit.  By noon I was having difficulty walking to the bathroom due to extreme dizziness.  I decided that I needed intravenous (IV) fluids so I called Dr. Jean and she immediately sent reinforcements over in the form of Matron Rose (the head nurse of the hospital). 

Matron Rose started the IV fluids and gave a dose of Ceftriaxone.  At this point I wasn't too aware of what was happening since my fever had started to climb.  I remember very little of the rest of Friday and early Saturday.  I spent most of the time Friday afternoon hallucinating.  A good friend Pastor Jonah stopped by and prayed for me, but I can't remember this clearly.  They later told me that I received at least 2 liters of fluid that day to replace the amount of fluid that I had lost that morning.

It took another two days to fully stop the vomiting and diarrhea but at least they had slowed enough that I was able to stay ahead of my fluid loss.  I'm amazed at how quickly I lost my strength from this one illness.  I have always been blessed with good health and I've never experienced anything more serious than the flu.  Even the flu was mild compared to this illness.  Only yesterday was I able to sit upright for longer than a few minutes at a time without becoming so dizzy that I would need to lay flat.  I'm still taking IV ceftriaxone and will continue until Friday evening. 

This has been an incredibly humbling experience.  I have never been "the patient", I've always been the one standing at the foot of the bed.  I've done quite a bit of praying to get through this episode and I don't have the answer as to why I had to be the one to get sick.  I'll probably never know on this side of heaven.  But there is a purpose even for this and I'm not going to be bitter about it.  I just feel blessed to be alive.