Got Malaria?

A visual expression of how it feels to have malaria

Last Sunday I came down with malaria for the second time. It was less fun than I remembered. But it still wasn’t as bad as I might have pictured in my head. I guess I would have pictured extreme sweats where you’re delirious and hallucinating, with lots of pain and hanging inches from death. Fortunately it isn’t much like that if you catch it early and keep it reasonably under control with medicine. In fact, this time we caught it after only one day and so I thought it might be rather smooth sailing. Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the medicine may be temporarily worse than the illness. My worst symptoms to start with were nausea, weakness, headache, and strong back pain accompanying 102-103 degree fever. For the next five days of being on two strong medicines I then got extreme nausea and diarrhea, extreme weakness, dizziness, aching behind my eyes, and hunger, but with losing the back ache and fever. I’m not sure that’s an equal trade, but with the ending of the malaria symptoms rather than their continuation and intensification, I’m definitely glad to have a doctor nearby who can get us treatment quickly. Of note, we just hit the first week or two of the cooler season, so I think that may have saved me from some extreme sweats. But I also think it’s amazing that many local people here will only miss a day or two of work with malaria, even though it’s knocked me flat for 6 days so far. We’ve been told that their bodies have built up more immunity from repeated exposure, but it’s also a reminder that not everyone makes it to adult working age through the gauntlet of childhood infections with little medicine.

I was also given more respect for those who fast or those who just don’t get much to eat in a day. I’ve known what it’s like to go for 12 to 24 hours at a time fasting before. But going through the process of not eating for several days because of nausea and then not eating much for several more, while still becoming very hungry, has let me see what it does to your thoughts and body. I do have to factor in the medicine and sickness taking a toll, but it’s hard for me to imagine how so many people around the world can still do physical labor while only having one or two small meals a day. Again, it’s something your body gets used to, but there’s also a tough malaise to break through to do anything when your body doesn’t have food to run on. I know that so many of the kids and adults around here have to skip meals because they don’t have money to buy enough food, and now it blows my mind to see how they can keep functioning.

--El Padre