Greetings, dear Hivers
I've been struggling for almost three weeks now to get over malaria for the 4th time this year.
It's been a very slow and frustrating recovery process, probably aggravated by a saturated liver that has been receiving too much medication whose origin and quality may very well be part of the problem.
The Venezuelan government runs the monopoly of malaria treatments and whatever medication they make available, you have to take (unless you appeal to natural medicines whose preparation is not always exact and whose results are not always effective). Currently, the pills they freely distribute in the outpatient hospitals come from India and Cyprus. The high percentage of patients experiencing the disease for up to 20th time, as doctors themselves confess, is alarming. In either case, I have finished the treatment and am waiting for some lab test to see how my body is dealing with this new (hopefully last) episode.
To make sure I'd keep my rest and would be away from a mosquito infested environement, my wife decided to move us all to her aunt's apartment. She is on vacation and offered her place for us to spend some time and take care of her plants once in a while. Restless as I am, I could not help doing more than watering the plants when I started to feel better.
My wife has been busy covering for me at the language institute, so I felt I needed to do something productive whenever I felt well enough.
Even though the apartment has always been well-kept, I spotted quite a few areas where, with minimum effort, I could contribute in exchange for the generous hospitality.
The upper part of the kitchen cupboards had been neglected who knows for how long. I can understand that from the floor, unless you are 7 feet tall, you would not notice any dust piling up there, but I was curious, did spot it and decided that I could improve that, even if noone would see it (well, now you saw it).
I did it slowly to avoid aggitating myself more than my weak body could afford and the result was more than rewarding.
I know the whole place feels cleaner, even if this part has remained unnoticed.
There are still some rusty places here and there and I am slowly getting to all those places, like a meticulous hunter. My wife's aunt is too old now to do most of the cleaning, she lives alone, and the person she hires to do the cleaning periodically may not see the need to work on this details.
I will probably go back home next week and will find that there is plenty more to do there than here, but I feel quite well having used some of my otherwise useless time for something productive.
Some habits, just like malaria, die hard.
