Getting down with the locals

I was hoping my stay here would be without incident, but how boring would that be? The week began normally, work at L’Oeil, a fruit salad lunch at home and off to the DED to talk to Susanne. I’m aclimatised to not being in an air-conditioned environment, so the a/c at the DED was a welcome change. By the end of the workday, I was feeling a bit chilly which happens switching from a/c to non in a short period of time. No biggie, I thought, I’m tired as well.
Upon my return home, I had no apetite and forced myself to eat some noodles and crawled into bed until I realized my breath had become hotter than usual. That night I suddenly came down with a fever reaching 39.1 celsius (thermometer courtesy of Geneviève, my roomate), shivering, sweating and running to the washroom every hour or so. Ugh. Great. I decide to wait until the morning to see if the fever will pass.
4 am in the morning and the neighbourhood rooster goes on his cock-a-doodle-dooing solo, the morning call to prayer goes out and I’ve turned off the fan and still shivering in bed. Pass out….sounds of rattles of motorbikes pass by. Wake up and its 8am. Time to text Stephanie, my coordinator at Oxfam-Québec. I type letter-by-letter on my non-French mobile, “Je suis malade avec fievre” translated into, “I am sick with a fever”. By this hour, I’ve simply given up on any sort of sleep and she tells me she’ll be right over to bring me to the Clinique Française. At a slow-motion pace, I get dressed whilst bumping into every single sharp corner of my room, groggy from lack of sleep and muscles sore from the fever.
The Oxfam-Québec “ambulance” arrives with Edgar (Stephanie’s husband) at the wheel and Stephanie as the “paramedic”. In the sunny, hot weather combined pollution, I begin to feel queasy and am thankful for our arrival at the Clinique. After a quick wait, the doctor sees me and perscribes me a bunch of drugs, that the generosity of the French health system! As a precaution, they test me for malaria, which I thankfully don’t have. And stab me in…of all places, the wrist to draw blood for blood tests. The first blood test indicates that I have a high number of white blood cells indicating my body is fighting off an infection. With the lab halfway across town, we drop off my blood and I also have to provide an *ahem* sample.
Four days later of popping pills and passing out, my lab results indicate that I have E. Coli. Dun dun DUN. I return to the doctor, who prods my stomach and tells me my colon is tight, which is causing me diziness and headaches that I was thought experiencing due to the heat and pollution. More antiobiotics are prescribed since E. Coli is resistant to the type of antiobiotics prescribed by him a few days ago. He tells me its common and is transferred by unsanitary conditions (whon whon), vegetables, fruits and meats.
To my fair audience whom I’ve forgotten to mention an important fact. I did see the doctor a week beforehand for fatigue and allergies. Could the fatigue have been caused by my body fighting off the E. Coli? Possibly. The anti-malarial drug I take is in essence, an anti-biotic. Taken daily, the E.Coli could have become resistant to it and thus me coming down with a fever. I’m not a doctor, but this hypothesis is quite possible.
So when in Africa don’t take signs of sickness lightly, become a hypochondriac and see the doctor!
Next week, I’m off work to rest and hopefully rid myself of these local friends. Wish me luck!

This entry was posted on 24. November 2007 at 20:12 and is filed under Thoughts, Food, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.