Four of us were diagnosed with dengue fever, but Praise God, Ubuntu is finally back on its feet!
For me, it started last Wednesday. We were planning to leave Grenada and travel to Leon, and a group from my team was heading to the clinic for a checkup for someone who wasn’t feeling well. I stayed at the hostel to finish packing and all of a sudden, I felt the sleepiness.
I told Lincoln and James, “I think I caught the bug.”
Lincoln, “We’re dropping like flies!”
James, “Another one bites the dust.”
So I laid down on the hammock at the hostel feeling like I couldn’t get up and being a baby about it.
We left for Granada. I was alright with the three-hour trip, just dizzy and really out of it. Poor Megan had listen to me explain and debate on our team’s spirit animals for a good 30 minutes of the bus ride.
The next day I rested all day, thinking I was just overheated and maybe dehydrated, and the next day I seemed fine… Until about an hour after I went to bed that night. The throbbing headache came. It felt like my head was a popcorn kernel a moment before it pops. It felt like my skull was an almost empty peanut butter jar in which someone was trying to scrape the very last bit out with a knife, and he would never give up no matter how obvious it was that there was no more flippin’ peanut butter. (The headache being coupled with dizziness and a fever, I came up with even more colorful analogies, which I will spare you.)
I prayed for the pain to go away, but it was unrelenting, it just seemed to get worse. I got a little frustrated by that.
The next morning I went to the hospital, had some blood drawn, wasn’t allowed to walk and was given an IV.
Not-so-happy camper
My impression of staying in a hospital in Nicaragua:
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The food was delicious- chicken and vegetables with plantains, Caribbean dish made with sauteed vegetables and hamburger patties, exotic juices, cantaloupe for breakfast with bread…
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Wasn’t a huge fan of waking up at 4 am to have my sheets changed.
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Was so thankful for my team (especially Dani who helped me do everything I couldn’t do with an IV in by myself) and our squad leader Laura to be there with me. The hospital stay was almost a delight because of them. Not quite. But almost.
Dengue loves company
Some of the only people who could make a hospital stay “almost a delight”
The headache stayed with me, but the nurses were able to keep my fever down with medicine.
My blood tests came back and surprisingly, my platelets were never affected, which is one of the symptoms of dengue fever. It is how they detect dengue. Yet I had all of the other symptoms that the other three on my team with dengue had. The doctor said all four of us had dengue… So… I am not sure what I had, but it was a huge blessing my blood was not affected because I could be released from the hospital after only two days.
The experience makes me feel humbled. I was so frustrated when God wouldn’t heal my pain immediately the night I got the headache, yet in the end, I was so blessed because I had such a mild case of a potentially-serious illness (or maybe it was something else?) I should have been thankful all along.
It was a lesson for me to trust God and to be thankful even when I don’t see the blessing at the moment.
