Malaria Sucks

Doxyclycline, I spit on you. I got malaria anyway, and spent Sunday through today in a hospital in Abidjan, which I have to tell you was pristine and sterile as any other (gloves aplenty), and where I received excellent medical care and especially excellent nursing care. I'm ok now. If you read the rest of this post, you forfeit your right to fret, worry, or otherwise be concerned about my health, because really--I'm ok now. But after having spent a few days on the other side of the patient-provider line, suffering such indignities as The Assisted Shower and being the recipient of the health care I was sent here to help improve, I do have a few tips to offer my fellow practitioners or students of nursing or medicine.

1. If while palpating an abdomen, you come across a belly button ring, do not let out a little yelp and ask, "My Lord, what is that?!?" (It's jewelry.) "Girls in my village don't do that!" A belly button ring is perfectly normal, at least in my village.

2. Look under the sweater. Out of fear of getting stuck a second time, I hid a blown IV from my nurses for about 6 hours, until concern for the loss of feeling in my hand outweighed the fear of being IV'd anew. This is not "best practice." So look under the sweater.

3. If you have to have to re-start an IV that was in the left hand, choose a site, any site, other than the right hand. If you take out an IV from a left hand and bandage it up, and put a new IV in a right hand, then the patient has no hands. Which is awkward.

4. Don't criticize your patient's French, which is quite excellent when she doesn't have a bloodstream full of parasites, thankyouverymuch.

These tips can apply even if you never see a patient with malaria. I am grateful, actually, that that the malady erupted here, rather than after I returned home (quite possible, as the incubation period can be as long as 3 weeks). I can only imagine the residents crowded in my hospital room, the Grand Rounds, the vampire-ish battery of tests, the case presentations... No, I'm lucky that this occured where palu=nickname for malaria (from paludisme) is commonplace and the clinical competency is high. I'm also lucky that I had Aicha to help me do literally everything--in fact it was she (and not the QBC rapid test) that delivered the earliest diagnosis. But if you really want to know what malaria feels like, take a cold shower and stand out in the Montreal winter, have someone kick you in the stomach a few times, and turn up your internal thermostat to 103. I'm going back to bed.

p.s. I am COMPLETELY better. Stop worrying... you know who you are!