Shakespeare. I can honestly say I hadn’t thought of the old guy in tights since my senior year of High School when we were reading Romeo and Juliet. And even then the only thing I remember is a lot of funny talking and saying one thing and meaning another. I think it might have actually been during Mr. Lang’s class that I realized I would never, and I mean never, be any good at this literary thing. In math, when you say 2+2=4 that’s what you mean, it’s great no metaphors, no similes, none of this fancy stuff, just a problem waiting to be solved. But as much as I love my math, I’ve come to realize that, unfortunately, life’s got a whole lot more symbolism hiding around corners than equations. Damn you Shakespeare. So if you’re wondering where the heck I’m going with this, just hold your horses and give me a little while longer to set this up. Like I said, I ain’t no good (yes I did that intentionally) at this literary stuff.
Recently I got sick, very sick. And it wasn’t the usually Peace Corps gastrointestinal issues—though for the first time in my service I was actually hopping that it was. I had a fever, a really high fever. No coughing. No sneezing. No congestion. No rash. No GI distress. No nothing. Just a nice and high fever that occasionally would decide to turn into a lack of fever and leave me trembling and cold. I thought it had to be whatever was going around my town until I realized that everyone else who had a fever was also a human snot container. I took a deep breath in and then blew it all out through my nose…nope. Clean. It wasn’t the same cold that was going around. I gave it 2 days to go away on itself. I slept, a lot. The second day I actually slept for 18 hours that day. I had no appetite. I had to remind myself to eat, I’d start eating a sandwich and lose all interest in eating 2 bites in. While my dog loved this trend—more sandwiches for him-- that’s when I knew I had to be sicker than even I was letting on.
I decided to call out doctors. I somehow dragged myself out of bed to walk to the public phone. My head was throbbing, my arms felt as though they weighed 20lbs each, and according to everyone that I passed I was as “red as a cooked shrimp.” After talking to the doctors we were still clueless as to what I might have. The only plausible cause would have been my recent trip to Tumbes…and I didn’t like the sound of that. To fill in the people not associating Tumbes with Mosquitoes like us Peru-Peace Corps volunteers: Tumbes has a Ton of mosquitoes, and therefore dengue and malaria. So as I said, I didn’t like the sound of either of those. We decided to feel it out for another day, see if the fever went down with Tylenol, and go to Chiclayo if it got any worse. I was to call the doctors in the morning and let them know if I was better or worse.
I woke up the next day in a puddle of my own sweat, a fever of 103, and a throbbing headache. I did some math and realized that the phone doesn’t open until 9, the bus to Chiclayo leaves at 8…I had a decision to make without the doctor’s advice. If I waited to talk to them, I’d be stuck and sick in my site for 2 more days until the next bus out of town if I got worse. Then I thought a little more and realized I couldn’t really get much worse and still be moving…so I packed up some stuff and went to wait at the bus stop. I hadn’t reserved a seat, so I was just hoping that I looked as bad as I felt and that would get me out of Nanchoc and into Chiclayo.
It worked. The second the bus stopped the bus driver, usually a rather unobservant man (which his 2 accidents should attest too…and should make me weary to take his bus, but it’s the only option) said, “Wow gringa, you look horrible.” I wish I had some smart comeback for that, but the sheer act of moving was taking up all of my thinking power. I asked if there was room on the bus, and they gave me the front seat. Now, If I had know that all I needed to do to get the best seat on this bus, where we are usually packed in like sardines, was to be this sick…well I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t be sick more often. Not only did I get the good seat, they KICKED someone out of said seat so I could have it. I would have been more impressed if I didn’t feel like poo.
The bus ride was horrible. It’s a hot bus ride even without the fever this time of year. I felt even worse on the bus than I did in my bed in Nanchoc. The whole trip went by in a blur, and the next thing I knew we were at the bus stop and I was sweating buckets in the seat. I got up to climb over the seat (yeah that’s how we get out of the front seat) and…yep, those of you who know me probably would have seen this coming… I fainted. I managed to play it off unbeknownst to me, no one saw me starting to get up, and so no one noticed me faint. The guy who works on the bus shook me awake and helped me off the bus. They got me a cab and I made it to my hotel. I was then sent to the Chiclayo doctor, a medical office located (thankfully) 3 blocks from my hotel. I gave tubes of blood, swabs, poo and pee samples, and waited for the results. They didn’t have the Dengue test, so we were just going to rule everything else out and see.
I felt worse the first day I was in Chiclayo, but then started feeling a little better the next day. I called to get my test results, and of course they didn’t have them. My doctor tried to speed up the process…but it was no use, I had to stay until I heard what I had. The next few days passed much like the days in site; I spent way too much time in bed and was hot flashing like a 50 year old woman. The only improvements: cable TV and internet. But with each day I started feeling better, so that was a good sign right?
Finally we got some results back, all my blood work seemed to be normal, and it just said I had a virus. We had figured so much while I was in site, I was a little mad that I had given that much blood and that’s the only information we got out of it…not cool. I waited around some more, and the rest of the tests came back normal, just a virus. So I was told that I “either have dengue or a virus that wants’ to be dengue when it grows up.” Not exactly the good news I was hoping for. Dengue has no treatment other than sleeping and resting, and the mystery virus has nothing better. So, my means of getting better were nothing but what I’ve been doing…fun?
I decided I can sleep with the best of them at site, so I got on the next bus to site and headed home. I slept a lot better in my own bed, and it was nice being with my friends at site again. It had gotten a little lonely sitting in the hotel room all day. When people asked me what I had, I just translated what the doctors had told me. Then for some reason, Shakespeare’s “a rose by any other name would smell just a sweet” line came up in my head. Except I heard “a virus by any other name will suck just as much."
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