As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, I’m still not feeling
well. This is, by far, the
strangest sickness I’ve ever experienced.
It started about 3 weeks ago.
I felt a weakness growing in me and by the fifth day I had to abandon my
morning runs. By day ten, I was
spending hours each day in bed.
Since then, my symptoms have gradually worsened. My entire body aches (especially my
legs), I have a constant mild headache, my face is sometimes numbish feeling,
and I have no problem sleeping 14 hours a day. Other fun facts; I often get light headed, my palms and feet
sweat, I shuffle my feet when I walk (slowly), and I get this odd cold-sweat
sensation in my legs. I feel like my
leg muscles are disintegrating.
It’s been an adventure. I’m
now in my fourth week, and, as of two days ago, the pain in my legs started
getting really uncomfortable.
When I wake up in the morning, I feel pretty good. That lasts for between 30 and 120
minutes, then comes the mild headache, and shortly after that the rest of the
symptoms arrive on the scene. I’ve
had a number of doctor’s appointments.
They haven’t yet figured out what’s going on, but have been ordering a
number of blood tests. This week, Peace
Corps decided that I should travel down to Windhoek to see a specialist, which
is where I am now.
I had my first appointment with the specialist
yesterday. The doctor was very straightforward
with me. He said he really didn’t
know what the cause of my illness was, but that he suspected that it was a
virus that would run its course and that I would start feeling better in a week
or so. He said he’s seen similar
cases in the past and he didn’t seem that concerned (though he did want to
admit me to the hospital, something I strongly objected to and a suggestion he
backed away from on the condition that I remain with or near other people). He said he was confident I would
recover, but that he doubted the cause would ever be known. He reviewed the results of the blood
tests I took in Rundu, and then he ordered 18 more. Watching him fill out my blood-work order made me think of a
person filling out a keno card at a casino. Hopefully, he wasn’t employing kenoesque wild guessing (or
maybe he was guessing and that’s the best anybody can do for me at the moment).
I’m completely confident that, whatever this is, I’ll
recover from it and be back to normal sooner or later. It's just an unpleasant detour. By far, the most frustrating part is
the impact to my work productivity.
It takes a lot of energy to get things done here, and I just don’t have
it at the moment. I’ve been
careful to not miss any of my scheduled meetings with consultees since I’ve
been sick, but other projects have had to be put on hold. Now that I’m in Windhoek, everything is
on hold. Knowing I’ll miss the
Swakop marathon is also disappointing, but there will be other races.
So, that’s pretty much my life at the moment. I got a great hike from Rundu to
Windhoek with three young Zambian guys.
They were a friendly happy bunch.
They wanted me to go to church with them this weekend, but I wasn’t
feeling up to it. I’ll go next
weekend if I’m still in Windhoek and feeling better. In any case, I’m sure I’ll hang out with them again
eventually.
That's it for now. I hope you are all well. Thanks for reading.
That's it for now. I hope you are all well. Thanks for reading.
Photo: This made me laugh. These are the tubes to collect my blood for my most recent blood tests. There were, I kid you
not, 4 more tubes in this tray originally. But, when the considerate woman who would be drawing blood
saw my blood work order, she said “oh, my” and then spoke to her supervisor and
got permission to consolidate some of the tests into single samples.
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