Josh gets Malaria
People continue to ask me about what it’s like to get malaria, so here’s a bit more. This excerpt is from my travel buddy Josh doing Peace Corps in Zambia and tells a little bit about his “mild” case. Learn on…
i did get malaria last month for the first time, although i was fortunate as it was a fairly mild case. malaria is a scary illness for people without access to proper medication, and malaria is responsible for more deaths in sub-saharan africa than hiv/aids–one of the great tragedies of the disease is that it’s easily treatable with a number of different medications. i ended up taking coartem which is cheap and highly effective, although it also seemed to tick off the malaria parasites before killing them. i had been able to operate more or less normally before taking the medication, but a few hours after my first dose i had to struggle up the stairs to my bed where i had a vicious bout of the chills that set my bed jitterbugging up and down. i had one more bad evening (malaria works in waves–the parasites enter your bloodstream, destroy a bunch of red blood cells, then stop to reproduce. they re-emerge more strongly about 24 hours later and repeat the process) and then that was pretty much it other than fatigue and a general lack of strength and stamina. even though i was quite sick it wasn’t nearly as bad as it can be and usually is, i’ve been around people with a serious case and they can just barely move; some pcv’s have had it to the point that they couldn’t get out of the bed to go the bathroom and general unpleasantness ensued (this is a common enough occurrence that having malaria guarantees a bed to yourself, even if there are other pcv’s around who have no place to sleep).