The World By Road

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O.K., not my death bed, but I certainly have felt like I wanted to die a few times. For the past five days or so, I have been… well, not well. I think I am starting to turn a corner, but after the roller coaster ride I have been on, I am not holding my breath, especially since one of my lungs feels like it has collapsed.

About mid last week, I felt fine and then almost instantaneously, I was hit with a noticeable fever. The fever was compounded by long periods of intense sweating followed by equally long if not longer periods of extreme chills. If I am not huddled in front of the air-con, I am curled up in a ball under a hot steaming shower. To make matters even more uncomfortable, my arms, hips and legs ache like they have never ached before. I feel like I am being used as a heavy bag by a championship boxer training for a title fight. I did manage to find my appetite somewhere in the last day which is nice, because I was not able to eat a single thing for nearly four days and the shorts I bought in Phuket are now about 3 sizes too big.

At first I thought what I had contracted was just a passing cold or maybe a case of the flu, but after 72 hours with little improvement and the fact that my gums were starting to bleed every time I tried to brush my teeth, I though I had better ask around. Believe it or not, many expat and US workers over here who saw me (yes we are still going out and trying to film stories) and listened to my symptoms smiled and told tales of when they too had been bitten by the odd mosquito who happened to be carrying  a bit of the old dengue fever with it.

I had heard of dengue fever, but I thought that it was more of a threat in Central America, Africa and India. As it turns out, it has a fairly sizable presence, actually epidemic, in the urban areas of SE Asia as well. After jumping online and looking at my symptoms, I am fairly certain that dengue fever is what my body is dealing with right now. Unfortunately, the only way to be 100 percent sure is to get a blood test and for those who know me… I won’t be pricking my veins to test for a disease that at this time does not have a treatment. That’s right, no cure no miracle treatment. Just rest, fluids and depending on how strong my immune system is, it might start to pass after a week or so. The good news? If it is dengue that I have contracted, I will now be immune from one of the four strains. The bad news? Since we are on the move on an expedition, we will probably be hanging out with the other three at some point.

Anyway, I am starting to feel a little bit better and for those who had to see the blood on my hands… literally… that seems to have tapered off as well. If it is what I think it is, I should have this thing licked in another few days. Luckily for me, I was in Bangkok when this thing hit instead of a tent on a lonely plateau in Mongolia.