I didn’t realize how prophetic my last post was until I was staring at my own bile last Friday night, August 18. My face was inches away from the toilet bowl, struggling with a 39.5 degree fever, retching my guts out into the bowl, emptying out what’s left of an already empty stomach, while blobs of gastric juices climbed out of my mouth in a steady tempo, the vilest taste of sourness you can ever imagine, cleaving to my tongue.
The natural course of action my parents knew they had to take then was to get me into a hospital, pronto. It was 2 days after the blood tests have been conducted and the fever has gone down to a comfortable 37 degrees somewhat that it was confirmed I contracted the dengue virus.
Me? Dengue? I thought only kids from depressed areas get dengue. Well, hmmm, now that I think about it, in a lot of ways, I still am a kid and I was feeling depressed for quite a while. Hehe, kidding. Anyway, it was 7 days worth of stay at the Makati Medical Center which saw my platelet count drop to 26,000 from a normal range of 150,000, countless blood extractions on my left arm to monitor my platelet count (the veins on this arm collapsed, by the way, due to the frequency of the blood extractions), hourly monitoring of my blood pressure which went down to 80/60 where at some point, the nurse could barely get a pulse, making my mom all weepy and sappy.
My doctor said there’s no medicine for dengue and that my own body would have to produce the platelets attacked by the virus. To help things along, I had 2 blood transfusions. My brother, who is scared to death at the sight of blood, agreed to donate some of his. We’re both Type A Positive, he’s the closest you can get to my own blood type.
And so, the days crept slowly upon me and while I valiantly distracted myself from the discomfort of staying confined in the hospital watching Kris Aquino’s Deal or No Deal, listening to the stories of my friends at work who came to visit (both CGAM and EPCIB friends, Joy Guevara, my cousins who provided their own brand of humor from the time I had my appendectomy when I was 12, Fred’s reassuring phonecalls) deep within my body’s bone marrow subterranean cavities, new platelets by the thousands were furiously being created, working its way up…. from 43k, then 60k then 85k until it reached 140k towards the end of the week.
A terrible 7 days I had, that one. I can’t stress the importance of immunity enough especially with today’s soaring medical bills. Thank God I had myself covered with Maxicare Gold Plan which took care of everything, a whopping P72k megabucks. We should never take our health for granted. I’ve had enough hospital experience to last me the rest of my lifetime….except when the time comes that I give birth, but that’s another story.
The natural course of action my parents knew they had to take then was to get me into a hospital, pronto. It was 2 days after the blood tests have been conducted and the fever has gone down to a comfortable 37 degrees somewhat that it was confirmed I contracted the dengue virus.
Me? Dengue? I thought only kids from depressed areas get dengue. Well, hmmm, now that I think about it, in a lot of ways, I still am a kid and I was feeling depressed for quite a while. Hehe, kidding. Anyway, it was 7 days worth of stay at the Makati Medical Center which saw my platelet count drop to 26,000 from a normal range of 150,000, countless blood extractions on my left arm to monitor my platelet count (the veins on this arm collapsed, by the way, due to the frequency of the blood extractions), hourly monitoring of my blood pressure which went down to 80/60 where at some point, the nurse could barely get a pulse, making my mom all weepy and sappy.
My doctor said there’s no medicine for dengue and that my own body would have to produce the platelets attacked by the virus. To help things along, I had 2 blood transfusions. My brother, who is scared to death at the sight of blood, agreed to donate some of his. We’re both Type A Positive, he’s the closest you can get to my own blood type.
And so, the days crept slowly upon me and while I valiantly distracted myself from the discomfort of staying confined in the hospital watching Kris Aquino’s Deal or No Deal, listening to the stories of my friends at work who came to visit (both CGAM and EPCIB friends, Joy Guevara, my cousins who provided their own brand of humor from the time I had my appendectomy when I was 12, Fred’s reassuring phonecalls) deep within my body’s bone marrow subterranean cavities, new platelets by the thousands were furiously being created, working its way up…. from 43k, then 60k then 85k until it reached 140k towards the end of the week.
A terrible 7 days I had, that one. I can’t stress the importance of immunity enough especially with today’s soaring medical bills. Thank God I had myself covered with Maxicare Gold Plan which took care of everything, a whopping P72k megabucks. We should never take our health for granted. I’ve had enough hospital experience to last me the rest of my lifetime….except when the time comes that I give birth, but that’s another story.