Tony Deyal, Contributor
AFTER THREE days, my wife Indranie was finally forced to concede that I was very good in bed. However, she felt that I would have been even better had I followed her instructions to the letter. Additionally, she thought that I could have done a little less moaning, groaning and heavy breathing.
Needless to say, I did not agree. I had tried to follow her instructions. However, I was shivering half of the time and it is difficult to strip and to allow the application of cold compresses when your skin is burning up with dengue fever. It is also very difficult to eat anything. Women invariably believe that chicken soup would cure every bodily, intellectual and spiritual ailment. I don't.
Dengue does not seem to like you to eat, attacking your salivary glands and taste buds, mugging them into submission. As to the moaning and groaning, it is something that we men do very well when we're ill. It seems that our entire life is mere practice for that one big occasion when we can moan and groan in front of the children in a socially acceptable situation. This was mine and, judging from her reaction, I might have made the most of it. Unfortunately, after four nights with Indranie, my condition necessitated more professional assistance. I told her that this time I needed professional help.
It is like the story of the butler of the rural English Lord who, on awakening his master one morning, discovered much cause for celebration.
"Shall I summon Madam for you, your Lordship?" he asked smoothly.
"No, dammit James, this one is too good for Madam," his Lordship replied. "Pack my bags, I'm taking it up to London."
While nothing normally in my possession, whether temporary or permanent, is too good for Indranie, I thought it prudent in my special circumstances to go to the hospital which (to use a classical English expression) is hard by. I checked myself in, and after waiting vainly for assistance was about ready to check myself out.
Dengue and patience do not go together. It is a virus that wages a relentless attack on your system. It feels like a gang of juvenile delinquents armed with chain-saws and blow torches prowling your estate for anything that could be chopped down, slaughtered and destroyed. There is constant pain behind the eyes and in the joints. Some muscles, even the large frontal thigh muscles, become cramped and virtually useless. The tablets buy a little time and space in the ongoing drama of pain but as the hours pass, the pain returns in waves and the fever once more tops the charts.
Dengue is appropriately called "break-bone" fever by my Jamaican friends. It leaves you "mash-up" for periods up to three weeks. In fact, some people take much longer to recover from its effects. Sometimes the best efforts of the nurses and doctors seem only to make things worse.
One nurse believed that not having eaten anything for five days, I should be forced to take in some solid sustenance. She decided to withhold my pain and fever medication until I did. My temperature shot up to 103 degrees.
Dengue does not like threats. What it does like is people who have already experienced one of the four stereotypes. The first time you get dengue, the effects are almost indistinguishable from the normal flu, except for the pain behind the eyes and in the joints. You would never get that same type again, but it makes you more susceptible to one of the other three stereotypes and to dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF), which can be fatal, particularly to infants.
One thing to absolutely avoid in any possible dengue situation is aspirin. It promotes bleeding and in the case of DHF can intensify the problem. I just thought of an old riddle. What Roman numeral climbs walls? IV. In my case, what Roman numeral is on the back of my left hand as I type? IV. Eventually, they stopped trying to get me to eat and plugged me straight into a food source. It makes it difficult to bathe and change, and even more difficult to type, but it delivers.
One way to beat dengue is by not succumbing to depression induced by the combination of the disease and the medication. It can get you down after awhile. Because of the constant pain behind they eyes, it is difficult to read. This is perhaps the longest I have gone in my life without reading a book. I miss the pleasure I enjoyed in variety, going to bed with Indranie, the two children, as well as Le Carre, Shakespeare and scores of others, too numerous to mention.
In the meantime, I cling to the little joys of recollection and do not miss any opportunity to celebrate the small victory and minor miracle of daily survival. I also appreciate the irony. Having spent seven years throughout the Caribbean teaching people how to prevent dengue, it is an interesting experience to change roles from hunter to hunted. It is like the story of the Englishman, clad in full hunting outfit and armed with a rifle who stumbled onto a totally naked lady in the forest. "What you doing?" she asked. "I'm looking for game," he replied. "Well, I'm game," she admitted. So he shot her.
Tony Deyal was last seen telling his wife Indranie that he had spent the last two nights with IV.
