Exploding Red Blood Cells

It's not unusual for me to blackout a bit, get a little dizzy, feel somewhat woozy.  Usually, it means I need food.  I sit down for a bit to rest, and I'm ok again.  So when it happened this Thursday, I wasn't really worried, just a bit puzzled.  I had eaten recently, I wasn't hungry.  I sat down for a bit and expected it to get better.  But it didn't.  I got dizzier.  My friend and I were done shopping.  I stood to leave the shop.  We started heading down the uneven dirt path.  I couldn't see.  "Kyura!"  I called out to her.  Some splotches of light shown through the blackness.  She helped me sit on a rock in front of a shop and ran to get me some water.

"White, you cannot sit in the sun."  A lady came over to me.  She helped me up and took me to a stool next to one of the cobblers, under an umbrella.  I sat and started to feel a little better.  At least I could see again.  Kyura returned with some juice and a bottle of water.  We drank and then resumed our shopping.  I still felt weak, but was able to sit in every shop we entered.  Kyura's brother came to get us and I went home to rest.

It wasn't until later that evening that we realized something was really wrong.  Some dizziness and such could be dehydration, could be a shortage of some nutrients, could be the change in weather.  A queasy stomach could be too much cooking oil, new foods, or different water.  But the dizziness, the headaches, the queasiness, and then feeling fine followed by feeling even worse and suddenly feeling extremely hot and then very cold.  That all points to one thing -- malaria.  Yes, Wendy, again.

Luckily, we'd all had it before and recognized it before I got super sick.  Kyura and her brothers took me to their local clinic.  The nurse did the usual, temperature, blood pressure, weight.  None of it meant anything to me, being half-out of it and the numbers in metrics.  We didn't tell the nurse what we suspected; she reached that conclusion on her own.  Here's some medicine to kill the parasites.  This one's a pain reliever.  These are multi-vitamins.  Two of these at first, then one.  Twice a day.  Three times a day.  One of these.  Two of these.  All these numbers, all these days, all these pills.  She wrote it all down.  I'll be fine again in no time.