For three days now, I have been under the painful spell of what seems to be malaria fever. After spending three days at my mother’s house helping take care of her (she is doing slightly better from her fractured leg), I came back home, taught my Saturday class at IFIE, and tried to rest a bit on Sunday. I had been feeling obviously exhausted because whatever long I stay at my mother’s I do not sleep (3-4 days in a raw). On Monday, the fever began…with a vengeance. My wife says it was over 40 degrees Celsius. I just know I relived the worst episodes of my childhood when high fever made me spend delirious days and nights.
It has been the same for three days now, adding to the symptoms piercing headaches, chills, vomits, and pain in all my joints. It was as if my whole nervous system was put on magnifying mode and every sensation of every part of my body had been amplified (not precisely in a Spiderman-way).
I went to a nearby laboratory on Tuesday after a terrible night, but the technician suggested to wait two more day to have the malaria test run. She said when done too soon it may come out negative, even if you actually have the damn parasite doing its work.
Yesterday, my wife had to take me to the hospital, the one where the treatment is given for free. Here’s the thing (a little bit of history), back in the 70s malaria had disappeared from our towns. I remember when I was 6 or 7 my mother almost died. She had malaria but nobody knew what to do. It had been long since anyone last suffered that diseased. There was a recorded case of a man who was also dying of it and the rumors of a woman also very ill with similar symptoms reached the malaria unit. They came to our home, did the testing, and promptly put everybody under treatment.
Los pastilleros (the pills men) as we called them, were a gray-uniformed team that patrolled high-risk areas, tested people with symptoms and, if the patients tested positive, they brought the treatment for patients and family members (even if they were not showing symptoms).
They provided a great service, especially in rural areas with low-income families, poor roads, and limited access to health centers. That unit was dismantled and their job transferred to ambulatorios (outpatient hospitals). These small hospitals were supposed to take care of minor emergencies so that the main hospital in every big city would not be overcrowded. Their mission worked for a while but in the last 15 years or more, they have been empty buildings where they even lock the doors at night because they do not even have a pill for a head ache to give.
Here is Cumaná, there are few places where people with malaria can get the treatment. The one closer to us is the so-called Hospital de Veteranos. They too demand that you have been showing symptoms for at least three days; they test you only if you are running high fever. Apparently the damn parasite is as devious as it is dangerous. I was running high fever when we left but by the time I got there I was sweating my life down. They decided to run the test seeing how bad I was looking, and I literally collapse after I got the sample taken. I had never felt so weak, not even when I had my renal colics.
The test came out negative and now I have to wait until tomorrow (running high fever) to have it done again. This has been a very tortuous week. I have the pressure of traveling back to my mother’s house. There is only one other brother helping out and he lives In Carúpano. He has a family to attend too and needs to rest after the long restless nights at our mother’s. I need to be sharp to work and make the money we need to collaborate with our mother’s care. Very few members of our family are in a position to provide funds, let alone travel and help in person.
I think that stress has done me more harm that the parasite itself (if someday it is proven that I had actually gotten it).
One of my mother’s neighbors says it may not be malaria. She went down some months ago with something similar. It was not malaria and just went away the way it came.
There might be consolation in that possibility (the malaria pills taste so horrible I can still remember the treatment I took when my mother almost died). It is also scary that we are now having these powerful viruses that can even kill people without ever being detected (especially in small towns where people can’t get tested or get medical attention).
I will wait until Friday, taking just acetaminophen and vitamins, and wish for another delirious-inducing fever to have the test done again. I never thought I could wish to test positive for a disease, especially malaria.
At least there is a treatment for it and it works. I’m just tired of these fevers and all the nightmares that come with them.
Headache is coming back. I think I did more than I should have for today.