The sneaky dengue fever

Oh my, I didn't write here anything for more than 2 months. Time flies... We've been here in Myanmar for more than 4 months. Many trips and guests happened, I have to write about them all to keep track of my memories. I will, but not today.

Today I want to write about something less exciting - dengue fever - since I've been sick with it for the last 2 weeks.

First time I've heard about this disease when I got to know that a friend of mine from Brussels, Alejandra, started to work as a travel blogger for an organization called Break Dengue. Here is the website & blog http://www.breakdengue.org/. Alejandra is currently travelling around South East Asia, doing her research on dengue and writing about her findings. Back then, when I first read about dengue, I didn't even knew about other mosquito transferred diseases besides malaria. I couldn't imagine that at some point I will know about dengue as much as I know now...

Firstly, once you're beaten by a mosquito, there is an incubation period of 2-7 days. And apparently I got that one, since I didn't feel bad immediately, but rather gradually started to get low fever of 37C, muscles pain and easily get tired. I thought that i'm just tired from all the travelling and sun heat... Btw, the mosquito is active in a day time unlikely to malaria mosquito who bites during the night. Ah, brave & stupid me - I never use repellent, especially during the day.

Secondly, dengue is also called a 'break bone' disease since one of the symptoms is bones, joints and muscles aches. Tell me about it... IT IS very painful! My low back and neck were so stiff and in so much pain so I had to take a looot of painkillers.

Thirdly, fever fluctuates from low to very high. I personally had 39,9 C. It comes back no matter how much paracetamol you've taken. And it brings a lot of headache, especially in the zone behind eyes. At moments I thought that my left eye is definitely going to jump out of a socket... Another amazing part of it is that you feel hot and cold at once. You are shivering like crazy trying to get warm. And when you're finally warm, you start sweating like a pig...

Fourthly, there is no vaccine against dengue and you can't be immune to it. Well, after being sick  I'm only protected for this seasons. But since there are 4 types of dengue and it also modifies from year to year, I am not immune for the coming seasons. What a joy...

And at last, there is also no specific antibiotic or whatever medicine against dengue. You just painfully wait until it's over taking some painkillers and paracetamol and drinking plenty of fluids. For me the fever period lasted for 6 days. It felt like 6 days burning in hell, out of which I spent five in Bangkok on my visa run and was 'enjoying' my hotel room since I couldn't do ANYTHING else. At least I was lucky not getting a hemorrhage dengue with bleeding and bruises.

Thanks to dengue I've get to know that actually a doctor from a very simple private clinic in Yangon can do much better than an advanced emergency room in a good hospital in Bangkok. This doctor diagnosed me immediately and his treatment saved me from burning down just in one evening.

Now I'm recovering thanks to this magician.  It's been my 4d day without fever (or almost no fever, since it comes back for short during morning time) and it feels great! The only downside is that I feel very tired and sleepy all the time (during dengue I had some kind of insomnia since I couldn't sleep well due to pain and high fever). They say it may take up to one week to completely recover.

This dengue is a great lessons learned:

- ALWAYS wear mosquito repellent while travelling;
- GO to the doctor immediately if in doubt - you're in Asia, and crazy things happened.

My mom is scared for me and saying that I shouldn't stay in Asia : 'You see, you get very sick there, maybe Asia is not for you!'.

Maybe it's not, maybe it is. At least 6 more months to go. And hopefully without crazy stuff! :)