As of late June, more than 40,000 Bangkokians had been infected with the dengue virus. If this rate of infections continues throughout the rainy season, during which dengue is most prevalent, by year’s end, about one in every 68 Bangkok residents will have contracted the disease. While this puts the odds in favor of your walking away from the season unscathed, it still bodes ill for the 100,000-plus people who will have to suffer through the virus, and risk their lives in doing so. Everyone who walks away from dengue has a story and these are some of those stories.
Alex Yamane is an American expat, working in Bangkok as an Android and iOS developer. We learned about Alex through our Facebook page, where he commented on a story about dengue fever and mentioned that he had first contracted and then recovered from the disease.
Coconuts chatted with Alex late last month about how he caught the virus, what the experience was like and the best way to score opiates that aren’t actually opiates.
Coconuts Bangkok: So first of all, could you tell me which neighborhood you got it in?
Alex Yamane: I live right across from the Rama 8 bridge. Saphan Thanon 9. And I think I got it around here, frankly. About two weeks ago there were a bunch of mosquitos and insects. I know some of them were mosquitos because I was swatting at them and there was blood. So I knew there was mosquitos. And I’d imagine that’s where I got it.
CB: No fun.
AY: First time for me. At first, I thought it was just a fever, or whatnot, but for people who have never had it before, you think it’s just fever, but then you’re like, “But why do I still have a fever on the third day? Why is it still going on?” And actually, I didn’t know it was dengue fever until the fourth day. I took the day off. I told everyone, “Hey, I have a really bad fever, I’m going to rest.” My girlfriend comes back from school and I have red hives all over my body. And that’s what prompted her to take me to the hospital.
And when I went in they asked them a bunch of questions, they took a blood test and then they said, “Hey, you have dengue fever.” And I said, “Oh great, what do I take?” And they were like, “There’s no cure. Go home, take some Tylenol, and if it worsens in two days’ time, come back to the hospital.” [laughs]
CB: What were the symptoms like?
The symptoms that are characteristic of dengue that I’ve gone through are behind your eyeballs you feel this pressure, where it’s almost like you have a knife or a needle poking behind your eyeballs and it starts to hurt, in the back of your head. At first it feels like a migraine headache, except it doesn’t go away. For days you have this headache and eventually it gets to the point where it’s like, “Oh wait, it’s coming from the back of my eyeballs.” It feels like, you know, someone is poking with a sharp instrument in the back of my head. So that’s the second symptom. And then the third symptom is you get these red rashes all over your body. There’s certain parts of your body where the red rashes happen. So not like, your whole body, but certain parts of your extremities turn red.
CB: So how long did it take you to get over it?
AY: Six days. It took me six days. At one point, about the fourth day, it got so bad that I thought that it was going to get worse and I wasn’t going to make it. Like, you get a fever and it goes away in a day or two, right?
CB: Sure.
AY: When a fever lasts this long, it really drains on your psyche. Because it’s the body load. The fever goes on for so long and your body load is so strong that it just exhausts you. That’s the number-one thing I felt. I would sleep, and I would sweat and I would wake up and I would have to change and shower again and then I’d sleep and I’d sweat. And that cycle, it’s just a never-ending cycle. That’s what’s very discouraging about this disease.
CB: You were able to sleep though, even with the pain and with the fever? How were you managing that? Were you just taking lots of Tylenol?
AY: I was taking a lot of Tylenol. I was also taking this analgesic called tramadol, which you can get at any pharmacy here in Bangkok. Tramadol is a painkiller, basically. It’s kind of an opiate analogue. It’s not the same as an opiate – a hydrocodone or an oxycontin – but it works pretty well, at least for my biology. So I took tramadol to get rid of the pain and then Tylenol, and basically tried to sweat it out. Oh! Then, the other thing, what was really weird was that you I was cold. It’s like, “We’re here in Thailand, it’s hot as hell and I have the windows open and my body is sweating and I’m freezing.” It’s like, “What is wrong with my body? I’m freezing?” That was really weird. I would take a shower and hot was cold and cold was hot. It was just really weird. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through it. It’s pretty damned miserable.
CB: Okay. Lesson learned.
For more uncomfortable revelations, check out Dengue Days #1 from Zachary Spector
