Friday, July 08, 2005

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
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The dreaded grey container
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The lazy man's way of drinking isotonic soda
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For the hospital fees I paid, I wouldn't expect anything less
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A sad attempt to earn pity from Christian buds
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2am, bored & bedridden
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No more, p-p-please...
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Giving home-cooked meals a run for their money
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Finally off the drip and wandering around
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Damansara Specialist Hospital's mark of excellence
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11 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

aiyoh, i feel your pain. hope you are feeling better and the bruises are gone already.

on a different note, i've been following your blog for a while, thoroughly enjoy it. get well and keep it going. :)

LC

8:36 PM  
Blogger Reta said...

poor girl

now be better now and be your usual bunny self =)

10:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

same clothes? whoa.

5:47 PM  
Blogger khaylis said...

ouuuuuch, after reading your post/looking at the bruises on your arms, i feel all weak...

hope you feel better!

12:46 AM  
Blogger jack said...

needle !?!?!? *faint*

good to know ur OK now..

3:20 AM  
Blogger zona marie said...

hope u're feeling better now. dengue sucks. that crazy look on ur pics, kinda makes me think otherwise =P

4:29 AM  
Blogger disco-very said...

LC,
yeap all better now. thanks heaps for following my blog, i'm glad you appreciate my brand of 'humor' :P

cyber-red,
BUH-NEE! BUH-NEE! BUH-NEE! *jumps around like an oaf*

[k],
you should have seen my hair.

amakanchi,
no no i'm out already, it's all good. i'm praying that your uncle pulls through alright.

khaylis,
thanks for your concern... yeah those bruises were nasty, they hurt like hell. there's still a smidgeon of them left. health is back to normal, i.e. from worse to bad. :P

jack0,
you're one of those guys huh? my advice for the moment: clear all potential breeding grounds around your crib! :P

rei,
i'm annoyed at how they just chuck inexperienced nurses out to the wards and expect them to apply trial-and-error. when my doc saw the bruises on my lil sis, he said that the person who did that to her should be sacked. hope your reason for entering ER wasn't too critical!

midnite lily,
it was the best medicine. ;)

4:07 PM  
Blogger earl-ku said...

hmm the "blue-black" is the normal effect from an inexperience nurse who took your blood - inserton and removing the needle

he or she, might have some miscaculations and resulted in your veins being poked the wrong way and hence you see blood flowing under your skin ...

i know coz i am a reguar blood donor ..


***good to see you up and hopping ... haha

2:02 AM  
Blogger disco-very said...

earl-ku,
thanks for the info. thinking about blood flowing under my skin makes me cringe... how neurotic is that?!?!

8:34 PM  
Blogger earl-ku said...

no actually the blood was flowing under your skin for like 20 sec, before theu curdled up ... haha

1:32 AM  
Blogger eg9 said...

OMG, you had denggue? ... Yipes.

Glad you came out of it okay... Have been missing out a lot of blogreading :( so this is a pretty delayed reaction.

4:09 AM  

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