A few days ago I started running up the mountain. With it being so hot it’s difficult to find time that’s cool enough to run, so when it started pouring rain I threw on my shoes and headed off, confirming for the whole village that, yes, I am totally barking. My comeuppance was quick to appear, as predicted by all the Thai people who had shaken their heads at my folly, this morning I couldn’t get out of bed.

This is not an uncommon occurrence for me, being definitively NOT a morning person. But even my addled morning brain could detect this was something different, and a slightly extreme reaction to having inflicted one little mountain run on my poor unfit body.

My back feels like it has collapsed, any strength or power I had there is gone completely and my legs and hips felt like they belong to the dingly dangly scarecrow, disconnected from my body’s centre and barely under its control. I drag myself through the morning washing of body parts, wrestling with t-shirts and scrubbing of faces before moving like a zombie to the car and going slowly through the motions necessary to get Clear Sky to school.

Only when I am at home again, and despite the mountain of stuff I’ve got to do today, know that I am only fit to fall back into bed, does it dawn on me that my bones are aching unaccountably all over. I remain prostrate in the bed for the rest of the day, adamant this can’t be Dengue Fever because I’m not hot, until Shrimp comes in, feels my head, and says actually I am on fire, burning up. At which point I begin to consider that this might well be Dengue.

Aedes Aegypti Mosquito

And so it begins, the days of lying inert, pained, unable to move, unable to look at anything due to stabbing pain behind the eyes, so just staring at the wall. The doctor confirms I have dengue and runs blood checks to see how low my white blood cells are, if they drop below a certain level I could be in danger of developing Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever, which can be fatal.

I ride out the wave of the illness in bed, sweating it out, alternately hot and cold, cold and hot, bathed in sweat and shaking with chills. As the virus runs through my body I develop agonising head pain and swellings all over my skull, an insistent nagging pain like toothache, but consuming my entire head.

When I start to feel better I crawl out of bed and eat some dry crackers, everything tastes like metal and makes my stomach turn but I force down the food and water as best I can. After a couple more days the nausea leaves, although the head pain remains, debilitating and frustrating me from being able to concentrate or write.

What is more disturbing when the illness finally leaves, is that I find I have sunk into a lethargic depression, from which rousing myself is proving virtually impossible. I can get up and fake that I’m okay enough to get Clear Sky off to school, but that saps all of my energy and as soon as she’s gone I’m a teary heap, unable to tackle even the smallest of tasks. Apparently this is quite common with dengue, but it is so demoralising and frustrating to feel almost well, but puffed out and exhausted from just climbing up the stairs.

Apparently there has been an outbreak of Dengue, with 26,000 cases throughout the country and six deaths in the last week alone. Dengue is transmitted by a small daytime mosquito, one of the really pesky ones that it’s hard to swat. There are around 40 million cases of Dengue each year globally, and several hundred thousand Dengue hemorrhagic fever each year.  By the late 1990s, dengue was the most important mosquito-borne disease affecting humans after malaria, in Africa and Asia.

There is currently no vaccine or treatment for Dengue. It’s hard to imagine a disease being this common, and this devastating, in a western country without serious effort and funding being put into finding a cure, treatment, or some kind of adequate prevention.

Just saying.

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