Monday, August 14, 2006

Malaria or Flu? You decide.

I spent Friday night having a mini-party at the royal compound and drank more than is healthy. In my defense, I was drinking vodka tonics in an effort to ward off any chance of having malaria from my recent jungle adventures. So I spent Saturday laid out with what I thought was a massive hang-over. For future reference, rice is no fun coming back up.

But now it's Monday and I am still feeling awful. I don't think hang-overs come with a fever and fevers in the middle of summer really suck. I have bonded with my sofa, shut off my phone(s), and am holding onto my bottle of Advil for dear life.

Is it malaria:

With malaria, you develop a high fever, which comes and goes every other day or few days. How often a fever returns varies with each species of malaria. Many infections do not show this classic pattern of returning fevers at all.
In many people the infection will seem more like the flu with high fever and body aches. People also will complain of headache,
nausea, shaking chills (rigors), sweating, and weakness.
As the infection progresses, the fevers get less severe and you seem to recover. But the infection can hang on in many people for several years, particularly for those with a long history of exposure to malaria. These people can develop some immunity and may be infected for many years while only rarely having symptoms

Or is it just the run of the mill flu? Remember me when I am on my deathbed folks.

PS Jovial- I will totaly give you the OK to post. But I think you should have to do a funny monkey dance first. Dance monkey! Dance! Oh and I need your email addy to send an invite to post.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

well... I don't have any video clips of me doing a monkey dance, but I do have some of me punching the crap out of a punching bag. That's monkey-esque, right?

jovial_cynic vs punching bag

addy: jculley at my site.

The Red Queen said...

It's mostly a monkey dance, but I totaly think your daughter could take you, especially with the big watercan as a weapon.

Invite's been sent.

Anonymous said...

Excellent.

Wonder said...

Hey cuz, i'm sorry you're feeling so crappy. :(

as for the flu-or-malaria question, I dunno. did you get bit by mosquitoes?

Anonymous said...

I seem to have lost my ability to post a few weeks back. I lost my password, the process used to automatically work from my computer, but it no longer does. Can this be rectified? -- lf