And for Christmas, I got a Urinary Tract Infection... (Sunday, Dec 28)

So, I had a real multi-cultural Christmas lined up, before Father Christmas showed up with his own agenda that is. The plan was to spend most of the day at the orphanage with the kids. They’d bought five chickens, the full array of the Ugandan staple foods, and a ton of sodas. I’ve been wanting to see how they prepare a chicken from being live and walking around at breakfast time, to dead on my plate for lunch. It was going to just be a day to let the kids loose a little bit, and it promised to be a fun day. Then in the evening, I’d been invited to a Christmas party at the Uganda Pioneer’s Association, an organization that coordinates volunteers from other countries working in the Kampala area. The most represented nation at UPA is, ... any guesses? ... Japan! Haha, yep, seems like they’re everywhere here, about half of the UPA’s volunteers are Japanese and there are another couple more working the area that aren’t with UPA. Others I’ve met have come from Korea, Ireland, and Germany. So yea, it was looking like the most culturally diverse Christmas I’d ever celebrated.

But on Tuesday afternoon, I got my first bad headache; figuring that it was just from dehydration or sunstroke or something, I popped a couple of Ibuprofen, and all was good. Wednesday, I got another headache, but worse; I figured the same as the day before, and just popped a couple more Ibuprofen. Christmas eve, I couldn’t sleep, ran a fever of one-oh-two, had a headache that was worse than ever, woke up several times in cold sweats, and basically, felt like I was dying. I lay in bed most of the morning, popping more Ibuprofens (doctors encourage this in the military, actually), naively thinking that I could sleep away (or at least wait out, because I hurt too much to sleep) the ill feelings. Well, Christmas afternoon rolls around, and I’m tired and exhausted of feeling like I’m gonna die, and of just, well, feeling tired and exhausted. Julia, another volunteer who doesn’t stay at the orphanage, looks up my symptoms and concludes that I’ve probably got the M-word (yup, malaria), and that I should probably go to see a doc.

Fast forward 30 min and I’ve dragged myself out of bed and been assigned two guardians, whose ages added up are barely more than mine alone. Destination: International Health Services, one of two health centres that tourist books recommend for foreigners to get medical treatment. The sign on the IHS door states that they are open 7 days a week, 362 days a year; unfortunately, Christmas wasn’t one of those days. Fast forward another 30 min as we’re just pulling into International Hospital Kampala, two teenage boys, with their disorientated, frail, pale-faced Chinese friend (yours truly) in tow. I get seen by a doctor without much of a wait, not before I manage to puke in the sink of the reception room of course. He confirms that I have the symptoms of malaria and that they’d need to carry through with blood and urine tests. Oh, he says, and your temperature is too high so we’ll give you a shot to lower it. Now, I’d received a ton of shots in my life prior to this point, however, never had any of them been injected via the bum. Well, I can scratch that one off the ‘try everything once’ list, and you can bet that I’ll avoid that one again if I can help it. So there I was, a terrible pounding headache, high fever, not far removed from a memorable puking demonstration in front of a sizable audience, and to add insult to injury, my butt was sore as well. Forward again to an hour later. Results are back, I don’t have malaria (phew!), but I do have a urinary tract infection. I’m not even really sure what that is, but all I really needed to hear was that a few anti-biotic pills and a couple of days and I’d be up and running again. Oh, and the shot to the butt did kick in after a bit and it did make me feel a lot better. And after spending Boxing Day sick in bed and feeling worse than ever, I started getting better and was back on my feet, for most of the day anyway, on Saturday.

Bottom line, it was an interesting Christmas, not quite what I had anticipated to happen, but oh well, at least I don’t have malaria, right?

And to those of you who may be worried, malaria isn’t actually as bad as I think we, from western countries, make it out to be. It’s actually quite common for Ugandans to come down with malaria, rest for a day or two, and then be right back at it again. Me and the other ACTS interns have concluded that African malaria to them must be equivalent to the Western flu to us. The scarier thought is that most common type of malaria that foreigners catch is celebral malaria, where it goes straight to the brain. AND, ok, I’m gonna stop now... =)