Random Story

Last fall my mom went on a Caribbean Cruise - down to the Virgin Islands, which are connected, through an island chain, to Haiti. When she came back, at Thanksgiving, she got sick. It started with, and mostly was limited to, a night fever and chills. Anyone who has ever read a book about the old frontier knows what that means - malaria!

Well, because we live in Kansas, doctors don't know what malaria is (too many text books, and not enough old west books I guess). My dad had a doctor friend from India who diagnosed it in a heartbeat just based on him describing my mom's symptoms. But she wasn't our real doctor. Our real doctor insisted on taking blood tests. The only problem is, with malaria you have to take the test when the fever is high. Apparently it is a parasite that grows in a cycle phase, and the fever comes at the height of the cycle to combat the parasite. Therefore, high fever = high concentration. What we didn't know was that, even with a test at the height of the fever, sometimes malaria just isn't found in the blood tests.

Right before Christmas, my mom was getting worse. She was sick in the day as well as the night. In addition, she had developed shortness of breath. The doctor finally agreed to give her the malaria medicine, even without a positive diagnosis, which was ok because this medicine can be used to prevent malaria as well as treat it. It didn't work.

The next time she went to the doctor (a specialist now), he gave her a new round of medicine - for medicine resistant strains. But we had a scare, because he thought she might have a clot in her lung...and then he sent her home. Luckily, there was no clot. My mom's abnormal breathing turned out to be a side effect of the medicine and left.

For Christmas we were to go to San Diego. I was going to fly to Chicago, then to San Diego, and then drive home with my parents. As my mom's condition worsened and treatment didn't work, my dad asked if I could cancel the trip. But because my mom really misses her mother, they pushed to try to go to San Diego anyway.

I flew to Chicago. When I got there, my dad called and told me mom was worse and to change my return flight to Kansas City. I did. Then he called back and said she was feeling better, that they would try to go to Amarillo and see if she felt good then. When they got to Amarillo, she was feeling good, so they went on. I changed my flight back to San Diego. The next morning, my dad called back. They were going home to be near my mom's doctor - she was worse. I changed my flight to Kansas City. (The moral of this story is to fly Southwest. Not only did they let me change my flight many times, I ended up with a huge refund due to the price difference betwen Kansas City and San Diego, and the second time I booked my San Diego flight, I got a refund on that, too).

They put my mom on double antibiotics when she got home - a pill and IV meds she took every day in the hospital. She took those for a week - going in even on Christmas. The fever started to subside. She was better! Through the entire ordeal, she had lost a LOT of weight because of reduced appetite - it was one of those Catch-22's because she looked great, but it was unhealthy weight loss and bound to return.

So that's my story about malaria showing up in Kansas. The moral of the story (besides fly Southwest) is that if you are in a malaria region, take the preventative medicine rather than risk catching it. Or use a lot of bug spray.

Oh, and malaria is not known to be in the Virgin Islands, but it is in Haiti, so it's reasonable for it to have migrated down through the island chain to where she was.