Round Two with the Medical System

They say if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans.  Well God is laughing pretty good at me right now.  I'd had high hopes to be hitting the road to Lanya this morning, Yei the day after that, and finishing off with Morobo on Wednesday, returning to Juba Thursday morning. We were looking all set to go until I got violently ill Saturday night.  At first I thought it was the cheese sandwich I had eaten since I started to feel ill after that.  Maybe the cheese had gone bad.  I hoped that it would be gone the next morning.  The next afternoon when I still felt like crap my boss insisted I go get test for malaria and typhoid, because it's almost always one of the two (or both).

The very capable staff at the hospital soon had me diagnosed: Just malaria.  (My typhoid levels are high but they said that was a false positive from having the vaccine only a few months ago).  They also tested for other parasites to make sure the malaria wasn't masking anything else (it wasn't).  I got my drugs and returned home to lie pitifully in bed and hope the drugs would work soon.

I suppose my trip here during the rainy season would not be complete without a bout of malaria, but in the midst of it now, I sure wish it were.  Malaria is pretty much like a bad case of stomach bug or food poisoning that doesn't go away in 24 hours.  Additionally, you're achy all over, and generally feel like crap all the time.  The recovery time hangs out more in the two to three day period.  The worst part is for the first day I didn't want to eat anything.  Those of you who've ever eaten with me will know this is unusual.  I'm not the kind of person to ever skip meals if it can be avoided.  But I can honestly say eating on Sunday the last thing I want to do.  I forced myself to have some chicken broth every now and then because I did recognize that not eating probably wouldn't help the situation, it was just so hard to do when my body was telling me the last thing it wanted to do was eat. I was (and have been) drinking lots of water though.

Fortunately by the time I went to bed on Sunday I was starting to to feel beter. I then managed to sleep for an entire 8 hours without waking once (also an anomaly for me, I'm usually a very light/bad sleeper who wakes up a couple times a night). When I woke up in the morning to sunlight I was very confused, but very happy to have slept when I obviously needed it.  I also felt a lot better this morning. I moved back onto solid food (although not a whole lot of it, I'm still working my way back up to regular portions).  I then came back to my room after breakfast and promptly took a three hour nap.  So I think the next day or two will revolve mostly around eating when I can and sleeping until my body stops needing those things in such large amounts.

I am feeling a lot better, my stomach doesn't hurt anymore, I'm not achy, but I can tell because I'm tired and still not totally hungry that I still have a bit more recovering to do, but I feel like myself again, which is the most important part.

In sad news, the trip to the other counties went on without me, it couldn't be rescheduled so late, and we had people who had arrived in country who were capable of doing the surveys I was going to, so they went ahead without me.  I'm sad to miss my opportunity to see the rest of Central Equatoria, but I'm glad I was able to take the time to get better and rest up properly.  My boss is a huge proponent of not working until one is fully operational again, so I'll be taking it easy until I really feel healthy again.

In other news, we finally got a new cabinet the other day.  The president saw fit to appoint 13 new ministers and get things rolling again at the national ministries, so we're all thankful for that. The one thing concerning people is who he will appoint as the new vice-president, which hasn't been announced yet.  Every one seems very happy with the cabinet appointments, so we'll have to see how the VP announcement goes, whenever it comes.

I'll try and put up a post about my trip to Terekeka (which fortunately happened before I got sick) in between naps over the next day or two.