Thursday, May 24, 2007

Typhoid, not the best of times...

A quick note for travelers: the Live Oral Typhoid Vaccine is only 60-80% effective. This is important to keep in mind.

Yesterday I woke up with a really bad headache and general body-aches. I drank lots of water, took extra strength Tylenol and Advil, but the headache didn't leave. This morning I woke up and I felt even worse. I actually thought, "I really hope I don't have to use my emergency medical evacuation issuance." My head and body/muscles/joints hurt so bad I could barely get up off my foam mattress. I also had a fever even though I had taken extra strength Tylenol a couple hours before. I decided this was a good time to seek some medical advice. I went to the clinic and told them I thought that I had a somewhat severe case of malaria. However, the lab technician said he thought I should be tested for typhoid as well. I came back 3 hours later to get my results and discovered I didn't have malaria, but I did have typhoid fever. I guess it is another disease to add to my list.

Required course in Ugandan Pharmacy School = origami. This is a picture of the 3 medicines I was prescribed for typhoid. The folded paper triangles hold some of my pills. An interesting drug-hold mechanism.


Here is a picture of the pharmacist counting out some of my pills. The shelves behind her house the drug selection - perhaps not as varied as in a western pharmacy.

I appreciate your prayers, but I think I will be OK. They told me my case is "not very serious" so I am sure I will recover soon.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I don,t know if it is necessary to catch all the third world diseases to learn about them. Andy

Christy said...

Hi Andy. Wow, thank you for this earth shattering revelation. Now that I know this I can stop intentionally infecting myself with horribly painful and life threatening tropical disease. :)

Unknown said...

I read about typhoid. Here is the site I read. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/
diseaseinfo/typhoidfever_g.htm
It says you should be care full not to spread it to others. And to check after you are better to see if the bacteria remains in your body.