Bed-rest in the time of chikungunya
On the last day of Creation, God decided it would be a great idea to make a vile introduction into the thoroughly unprepared world of men, a bug so unfathomably useless in the ecosystem of life that its only role would be to spread chaos or, at best, mild irritation. Called the Culicidae, these masters of mass hysteria/mild irritation are responsible for a sick game of population control that nature has been playing since blood flowed in the veins of man.
In modern society we know these lowly bugs to be mosquitoes, and it astounds me how absolutely terrible we are at keeping these miniscule agents of hell at bay.
It started small—a throbbing pain in my left shoulder that felt like the after-effects of a pulled muscle, but given the last time I picked up anything heavy or did anything laborious I was five years younger and 40 kilograms lighter, that couldn't have been the case. Four hours later, I was groaning deliriously amidst a ridiculously high fever as my friend from final year in medical school kept telling me over the phone to pop Paracetamols into my mouth like popcorn.
It took superhuman effort to get out of bed to get a glass of water from just four feet away. Fuzzy, feverish mind battled pain-racked body, and I just lay there in bed, unable to do anything at all. What does any sane, independent, sensible 24-year-old do at that point? Deploy the parents, of course.
My parents took turns taking care of their catatonic son, entertaining my increasingly exhausting requests like "Feed me", "Where's my cat? Feed my cat", "Is there any cranberry juice", "Please carry me to the other room so I get better WiFI reception"—till they'd had enough. They were in the midst of moving houses, and they just couldn't put up with my Chikungunya induced neediness. After a short trip to a fancy hospital emergency room, where they told us they don't accept Chikungunya patients, my parents decided it was a great idea to take me to a clinic nearby where the receptionist herself was suffering from Chikungunya, and was manning (womanning?) the desk during the day when CHIKV carrying mosquitoes usually strike.
Recover I did. They pumped me full of saline and suppositories, gave me sponge baths, and against my vehement protests, force fed me lotkon till I wanted to throw up. Just 24 hours later, my fever was gone, there was a spring in my step as I went to relive my over-active bladder for the 3000th time, and my vision cleared and I could see and feel things perfectly. That's when I noticed at least eight or ten mosquitoes, roaming around, casually biting me. I put my clothes on, calmly told the nurse to remove the saline drip, and bolted out of there.
Over the following week, the rash came and went – being a master of self-control, I fervently itched myself only twice and succumbed to the heady aroma of beef curry, which immediately sprung a mild rash on my arms and feet. Then came the incessant joint pain, which even the mildly optimistic Chikungunya expert, the likes of whom seem to be everywhere all of a sudden, said would last at least two months with recurring relapses for at least a year.
I would go on and tear into our healthcare system which is entirely unprepared to tackle a widespread outbreak of such diseases and talk about the serious lack of action from our city corporations and mayors, but I'm afraid my joint pain is acting up again. It physically hurts to type, so I shall stop typing and go back to a troubled sleep.
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