Doggone dengue

It starts off like a flu. Then that flu gets squared, and squared again, and the process carries on until you're a mess of twisted flesh left begging for mercy or at least a good swig of sake. The night before I got admitted into the hospital, I gave up trying to sleep after seven silent hours of tossing around in bed, my mind making drunken roadtrips across the highway separating Lalaland from Nightmare Central.

Having dengue fever, in a nutshell, sucks.

A healthy blood platelet count is 150 or so. My first blood test revealed mine was around 60-ish. The next day it dropped to 44. The doc said that once it hits 20 then I would need a transfusion. There's no cure nor medication for dengue, so all we had to do was wait for my body to start fighting back.

I learnt in a rather unfavorable way that the worst part of the disease was not the symptoms. Being "under close observation" initially sounds irresistably sweet - you get nurses coming in every few hours to ask what you've eaten, how many times you've gone to take a piss, the whole shebang. Sounds like my mom actually. But yeah, on some visits they come in with these horrible little grey containers carrying gauze, plasters and alcohol swabs. And these nurses, as cherubic-faced as can be, seem intent on promoting the propogation of needlephobia. They poke and prod you as though it's some twisted round of Pin The Donkey. The nurse who plugged the intravenous drip into my wrist seemed oblivious to my worm-like writhing. "See, no pain!" she chirped, and upon noticing blood oozing from the puncture wound, quickly hid it with surgical tape.

One of the nurses just gazes at the needle she so casually shoved up my arm. "Oh, your vein has run away!" she tells me. My freakin' arse it's run away, you apathetic cow. Then she yanks the syringe out and starts observing the green-blue lines protruding through my knuckles. "I'm going to try here, it's going to hurt a little bit, ok?" A LITTLE BIT, yeah lady? I'm sure it does only smart a negligible amount, considering the fact that my last two fingers remained numb for 3 days.

Surely there must have been other less painful ways of drawing blood, like maybe digging my nose real hard or taking advantage of my incidental time-of-the-month...

But I digress.

My stay at the hospital was blissfully unconstructive. My basic activities for the day consisted of sitting up to eat and flopping backwards to sleep. I watched CNN, HBO and my first episode of 'Kim Possible' on the Disney Channel. Can't say that the food was stereotypical. And the icing on the cake? Well, notice that I'm wearing the same clothes in all the pictures... go figure.

Video of a sissy retard's first blood test

Hi-ho, hi-ho, blood pressure very low


The dreaded grey container


The lazy man's way of drinking isotonic soda


For the hospital fees I paid, I wouldn't expect anything less


A sad attempt to earn pity from Christian buds


2am, bored & bedridden


No more, p-p-please...


Giving home-cooked meals a run for their money


Finally off the drip and wandering around


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