Emalaria Jones: Fighting Infectious Disease, One Mosquito at a Time

For those of you who read the WebMD page on malaria and were convinced that I would be sent home in a wooden box, I thought I'd give you a run down of what malaria is like.

Monday I felt fine. Great, even. Until nighttime. I spent the night at my program's center rather than with my host family, and around 10:30, I felt sleepy and began to get ready for bed.
Literally, in the time it took me to brush my teeth, I felt like I was dying. Worst body ache of my life, particularly in my hips and knees; headache; fever. I was exhausted, but I hardly slept because given the body ache, I couldn't get comfortable.

At about 4:45 in the morning, I felt like I had to poop. That's strange, I thought--I wake up to pee but never to poop. So I stagger to the bathroom only to diarrhea the most vile diarrhea of my life. It kept coming and coming and coming. I thought I would look down and see my organs in the toilet.

(Sorry if that crosses the TMI line. Living in Africa gives you a very frank relationship with your bowel movements.)

Went back to bed, pulled the trash can over because I thought I was going to puke up my remaining organs, and lay there thinking, "This is it. I'm dying. I'm never going to get out of this bed."

The next morning, I had to go to the American Embassy, which made me incredibly angry, but that's another story entirely. The whole time I was extremely exhausted and headachey.

Got my malaria test at a lab that afternoon, and then the program doctor text messaged me a prescription. I can't decide if that is more or less 21st century medical care than I would receive in the U.S.

Went home, lay in bed crying and writhing around in pain, diarrhead some more.

But, I took the meds and my worst symptoms were over within about 36 hours. Since Wednesday morning, I have been lying in bed, alternating between fever and chills and sleeping a lot, but not feeling like I'm dying anymore. I caught up on The Young & the Restless, courtesy of South African tv.

In Africa, malaria is like the flu. You get it all the time, you're sick for a few days, and then you're okay. Unless you're a baby, or geriatric, or an AIDS patient, it's not the crisis everyone imagines.