That shot was taken off my balcony at around 6am. You may ask what I was doing up so early, in fact I was up around 5am. Again you may ask why? I actually went to bed around 7pm yesterday because I had a headache and felt slightly febrile and I did not wake up till around 5am. I actually felt worst than the night before but my headache was gone, which was a definite improvement because I cannot deal with having a headache. Joint pain, fever, nasal clogging, and even chills I can deal with but headaches really mess me up.
Either way we actually had internet access in the morning so I decided to look up symptoms for Dengue Fever, since they mentioned it is prevalent on the island during orientation, yes I know it was a smooth move on the part of administration. Either way I did the stupidest thing a young doctor in training could do, I self-diagnosed myself. I checked out some WebMD and Wikipedia entries about Dengue and learned that there are two types, Dengue Fever and Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. The later is the really bad one, if you couldn't tell from the name, it involves bleeding from orifices and usually lays people out for a good week and has a 1-2% fatality rate if Dengue Shock Syndrome occurs. I checked said orifices and I came up clean. The virus is passed through mosquitoes that bite during the day, in contrast to malarial mosquitoes which bite at night. Since we have all gotten bitten up by a ton of mosquitoes I was starting to get scared. That and I was exhibiting the classic symptom of biphasic fever.
So after the mistake of self-diagnosis (kind of like how most of us thought we had serious psychological issues when taking personality psych classes) and the initial scare, thanks to the internet, I went to go workout and do the cross training portion of my marathon training schedule.
And of course what do I see as soon as I step out the door...yes a mosquito...and let's just say it's in a better place now (either that or scraped along the corner of the wall).
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