Readers may well want to know where I've disappeared over the past week since I said I was leaving TnT soil.
Fact is, I began to feel feverish on the plane back, and by the time I reached my home in Birmingham I was running a temperature of 38.8 °C.
I spent the last 8 days in hospital, fighting off the dreaded dengue fever. Yeah, you read right. I had dengue fever, picked up from a mere 3 week holiday in Trinidad. I was released from hospital about 7 PM last night.
The funny thing is that I was seen by about 6 or 7 doctors, none of whom had ever seen or treated dengue fever before. The testing of my bloods was done in London, since again, Birmingham did not have the wherewithal to carry out these tests. The haematologist at the local hospital is a Trini by the way.
I must say the doctors were more than thorough. I asked for a dengue screening, and they put me through TB, malaria, hep C, yellow fever... the works. They all came back negative, except the dengue testing which did not come back at all.
So how do I know I have dengue? Well, according to the doctors, my body behaved in typical fashion - first my blood work (especially my platelet count) fell rapidly, then I responded to IV fluids (about a litre per hour), then after the typical 10 day period, my blood works went back to normal. I am still as weak as a new-born kitten, but hopefully am well on the road to recovery.
My appetite has dropped considerably, I've lost a lot of weight (try 10 days of no food, it works wonders for any diet).
I'm going to make myself a cup of tea, sweetened (my blood sugar as well has been below 4 for days - not a good thing),and watch the last episodes of House MD and Smallville that aired this week. Then I will deal with various crap situations of which there are many I can tell you.
