Malaria

Well last week was one that I don't think either of us would like to relive.

I actually ended up getting malaria, despite taking the recommended prophylaxis of Mefloquine. I started to feel sick late Sunday night, but just thought I could sleep it off and maybe I would wake up feeling better on Monday. That was certainly not the case. I had a high fever and was extremely achy - with a horrible head-ache too. Nothing seemed to help. I also had a sore throat, so that is why I wasn't too concerned...at first. Chad had a sore throat for the past few days, so I just assumed I got a worse version of what he had. The fever and aches and sore throat continued as I stayed in bed all day on Monday (only leaving the room to respond to a few work emails). I couldn't seem to get comfortable and nothing seemed to take the fever away. I didn't sleep much that night and then woke up feeling slightly better on Tuesday, but still with a fever, aches and a sore throat. Again, I spent most of the day in bed. Later that afternoon Chad and I started talking about maybe going to the doctor to see what was going on, thinking that maybe it was malaria. By the time we decided that we should actually go for a blood test for malaria, the clinic nearby was closed. Chad was getting more worried, so he decided to go to the nearest pharmacy and buy the malaria meds so that I could start them that night, and then I could go for a malaria test first thing Wednesday morning. So that's what we did. By Wednesday morning I had already taken 2 doses (of the 6) to treat the malaria and I was already feeling a bit better. I did go for the blood test and the doctor did say that I have malaria and should continue the treatment. From then on, I did start to feel better. It's a short treatment and seems to be quite effective, so that was reassuring.

I seem to be over any of the symptoms now, my sore throat is gone and so is Chad's. Now the trick is staying healthy for our last week and a half!

We are getting really excited to be coming home next Friday! We are trying to finish up all that we wanted to get done while we were here in Ghana this week and next week as well as spend the remainder of the donations.

We were able to buy a motorcycle with some of the money, so I'll add a picture of that here. They were very excited about the motorcycle because that will end up saving them so much time each and every day!

We also bought the kids each a pair of flip flops and we plan on buying each of them some new clothes. It's certainly been fun to try to spend all of this money!