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Dengue Fever – Catch it! Or Not |
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The
writer trying to find sustenance in a can of soda. Courtesy
Amy Loftsgorden. |
I spent a short amount of time in the doctor’s waiting room, which was really nothing more than a hallway with a receptionist’s desk. I was then ushered into the doctor’s office by what I can only assume was his wife, daughter, or girlfriend. After what seemed like hours later, the doctor came in, spent about one minute examining me, and diagnosed my problem as appendicitis.
Though I vehemently protested, the doctor insisted that I go to the local hospital and schedule surgery as soon as possible. I decided that a second opinion was in order.
I wandered through the streets of Granada, eventually finding my way back to my hospedaje. I was sharing a tiny room with a traveler from Canada and a small lizard. I’m quite certain the lizard was not chipping in for the cost of the room. The walls were a thin pressboard that did not go all the way to the ceiling and were not at all sound-proof. I had just finished telling my story to my roommate when we heard a knock at the paper-thin door.
Fortunately for me, there were several American medical students who were staying in the room next to ours and they had heard my predicament. They had been doing volunteer work at hospitals throughout Nicaragua and suggested that I go to Hospital Bautista in Managua for a definitive diagnosis.
The fastest way to get to Managua was to take a minibus, which to me looked like it could carry around eleven passengers.
As one of the first passengers to board, I chose a window spot on a small bench seat that was located in the back and hoped that no one would sit near me. As the minutes passed, more and more passengers loaded on to the minibus. Eventually, the driver decided we were full when there were no fewer than 25 other people on board.
I was squished up against the window with four locals who had crowded onto the small bench seat with me. After what seemed like a very long ride with unfriendly passengers who treated me like an Ebola carrier--during which I felt horrible due to a combination of my fever, aches, and the 90-degree heat, I arrived in Managua and caught a taxi to the hospital.
As the medical students had told me, Hospital Bautista was as modern as any hospital in the United States. The very competent hospital staff was able to quickly and accurately diagnose my problem as dengue fever, nicknamed “breakbone fever” for the severe joint pains it causes.
Dengue fever was first identified in Asia in 1779 and since then it has caused epidemics in India, Sri Lanka, East Africa, South-East Asia, and parts of South and Central America. While dengue is primarily a disease of the Tropics, it has steadily been moving across the globe into previously uncontaminated areas throughout Asia, Africa, and even into some parts of North America.
Mosquito
infestation and dengue outbreaks as of 2000. Courtesy Center
for Disease Control |
Dengue comes in four viral varieties, so people living in a dengue-endemic area can have four different types of infections during their lifetimes.
The most serious form of dengue, the potentially fatal dengue hemorrhagic fever, occurs in people who have already been exposed to the “milder” forms of the disease. Dengue hemorrhagic fever is a nasty bug which effectively destroys the platelets that cause blood to clot, sometimes causing the sufferer to bleed to death. Generally, travelers tend to contract a milder form of dengue.
Yet, even a mild form of dengue is, to say the least, unpleasant. Its symptoms include a sudden onset of high temperature, headache, nausea, severe joint and body pains, and extreme sensitivity to light. Sometimes a rash, which itches and burns, will appear several days after the onset of other symptoms.
Dengue will make you feel dog-tired all the time and exhausted after doing the smallest of tasks. Unfortunately, there is no vaccine and no particular treatment for Dengue. All you can do is take massive amounts of painkillers and rest.
So how you do avoid becoming a victim of dengue?
This virus is transmitted by the bite of the vicious and unrelenting Aedes aegypti—that’s right, the common mosquito.
Somehow it makes sense that the same vile little creature that spreads malaria and yellow fever is also the carrier of dengue. This also explains why the virus is spreading across the globe.
Dengue-endemic countries have typically been Third World countries, which have little or no mosquito control programs in place. Also, the world is becoming smaller thanks to increased travel by airplane. This provides the ideal mechanism for transporting the dengue viruses across borders—a dengue-infected person flies to a non-endemic area, is bitten by a mosquito, that mosquito bites a healthy person, and bingo, dengue’s in the neighborhood.
So, clearly the best way to prevent the disease and halt its spread is to avoid being bitten by the little monsters in the first place.
To successfully accomplish this, you should wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants to limit your exposure. Also, avoid wearing navy blue—some experts claim that mosquitoes are drawn to this color. Mosquito nets and mosquito coils are also especially useful. Most importantly, you should use liberal amounts of insect repellant.
During the first 10 days that I had dengue fever, my eyes were so sensitive to light that I was forced to wear sunglasses not only outside, but indoors as well. Often, I did not crawl out of bed for days at a time and the simple act of moving a body part caused excruciating pain.
I started to feel a bit better about two weeks after the first symptoms and managed to do some sightseeing and onward travel. However, as typically happens with dengue, the fever had only subsided briefly before going into its second, more virulent stage.
Before I knew it, the agony was back for a second, more intense round. In fact, it took more than a month for me to completely recover from my dengue-related aches and pains.
If all of this isn’t enough, if I’m ever infected with dengue again, I will likely die a horrible bloody death after hemorrhaging out all of my vital bodily fluids.
Like virtually all travel experiences, there is a lesson to be learned here: Buy the $4.95 USD spray bottle of Jungle Juice.
Amy Loftsgordon works as a lawyer in Colorado, though she much prefers airports to courtrooms.
