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Friday, September 04, 2015

My Leptospirosis Experience

Day -7, Friday, 17 July 2015, corresponding to 1 Syawal 1436 Hijri:  It was the start of Eid al-Fitr ("Hari Raya") in this country.  For the whole "Raya" week, my family and I visited close and distant families, relatives and friends and occasionally, when the shops and restaurants started to open for business, had meals (breakfast, lunch and/or dinner) outside or "taken away" at home.  Jungles, forests, waterfalls, rivers, beaches, seas, oceans, lakes, etc were not in my travelog during the period.

Day 1, Friday, 24 July 2015:  A week after Eid al-Fitr, at around 6:45 to 7:00 pm, while I was trimming my nails, I felt dizzy, felt like having "inner fever", even if there is such a thing, and felt like my heart was pounding so damn unbelievably fast (palpitation).  After telling my wife about my condition and performing Maghrib solat (prayer), I was bedridden, lying flat on the bed sleeping.  Using the complimentary blood pressure monitor given by my generous employer which I'm working for currently, my wife loyally checked my blood pressure and pulse rate every 1 hour and woke me up for Isya' solat and forced me to drink a glass of plain water every hour up to 4 or 5 glasses, I think.  According to her, my BP was normal but my pulse rate was astoundingly high at 135 bpm!  From the advice given by her ex-high school doctor friend(s), who also happen(s) to be my ex-high school doctor friend(s), it's wise for me to go seek medical treatment right away for fear that those were dengue shock symptoms.  My wife decided to take me to the nearest government clinic the next morning to have my blood analyzed.

Day 2, Saturday, 25 July 2015:  I woke up still having fever, dizziness and palpitation.  At the clinic, because it's closed on Friday and Saturday, my wife and I had to wait for a few minutes for the Medical Assistant (MA) on standby nearby to come to the clinic first.  Unfortunately, when the MA arrived, presuming he was one, we found out that the lab where you can do the blood test is not open on weekends (Fridays and Saturdays here).  He took my BP reading and it was now alarmingly low at 70++ and 50++!  My pulse rate also became slightly higher than the day before at 138 bpm!  We told him that we'd like to go to the nearest government district general hospital on our own but he told us that following the procedure, he could not simply release or "discharge" me until my condition especially the BP stabilized.  He administered 2 bottles of "salt water" (sodium or natrium chloride (?) whatever) into my body by streaming them through my blood vessels via the back of my palm.  After my BP went up a little bit (I forgot the readings), my wife and I went to the hospital.  In the emergency room, the doctors who attended to me checked my BP.  It went down again (around 70++ and 50++, I think) and my pulse rate was still above 130.  Again, another 2 bottles of "salt water" had to find their way into my blood veins, arteries and capillaries.  I think my blood sample was taken there as well to check for dengue presence.  The result was dengue negative but one of the doctors told me that dengue-infected blood would only "change" on the third day, or so he said.  After the doctors were satisfied that my BP had improved though not yet gone back to normal, I was admitted to the male ward, obviously.  The night of my Day 2 was spent at the hospital, surrounded by another "lepto" positive teenage patient up opposite my head, a man stung by a few wasps on my right, a suspected dengue patient down opposite my legs 45 degrees to the left, and a suspected lepto patient on my left.

Day 3, Sunday, 26 July 2015:  I woke up still having all the symptoms mentioned previously but now also with thigh and calf muscle aches.  My BP had gone back to normal but the pulse rate was still high above 100 but below 130 bpm range, if I'm not mistaken.  The fever and headache were still there.  The blood test was still negative for dengue but because I was still having those symptoms and my blood platelet count dropped a little bit from 200++ on Day 2 to 190++ on Day 3, even though it was still above the normal count of 150 and above, the hospital still refused to discharge me and instead took another sample of my blood, this time for lepto test.  Throughout the day, the suspected lepto on my left was cleared of lepto and discharged.  A suspected dengue patient took his place and the new patient was later diagnosed as dengue positive.  The "waspman" on my right was discharged and replaced with another dengue positive patient.  The suspected dengue patient down opposite my legs was also found dengue positive.  At night at around 8 pm, the blood test result revealed that I was lepto positive.  From the advice of friends from social media, my wife who came to visit me daily went back home to boil "lemongrass water" as a so-called "traditional cure" for lepto.  So, the night of my Day 3 was spent at the hospital, surrounded by that other "lepto" positive teenage patient up opposite my head and 3 dengue positive patients on my right, left and down opposite my legs 45 degrees to the left, all 3 of them sleeping in their individual mosquito net.

Day 4, Monday, 27 July 2015:  I had my first "lepto antibiotics" early in the morning.  When I rose, I could not recall if I still had fever and dizziness or not, but my BP was normal and my pulse rate was also almost back to normal.  However, my thigh and calf muscles still ached.  I talked to the nurse that I intended to go to a private specialist hospital for better privacy so that my wife and children could come visit me without any time or other restriction.  She said I had to tell that to the doctor who would come later in the morning.  When the doctor came, I told him that and he said "no problem" but the "transfer" process would be at my own risks.  My wife also came with the "lemongrass water".  I had to gulp 400 ml of it down my throat.  It tasted like squid "singgang" soup in the beginning but after a few gulps I had to force myself to finish it.  After a while, my whole body started to have that muscle-aching kind of feeling and I felt so tired.  I'm not sure if it was due to the antibiotics, "lemongrass water", or lepto itself.  Anyway, after being "discharged" and doing whatever necessary things to make sure I could get warded at my chosen private specialist hospital even though I had no other choice really, I arrived at the hospital in the afternoon.  I went to see the doctor, was put into the "temporary" "daycare" area lying on one of the beds there while waiting for available rooms/wards (after their existing occupants completed their discharging process) and had my blood sample taken for analysis.  At about 5 or 6 pm, the doctor came and surprised me by informing me that I was (already) lepto negative!  I told him about the first antibiotics at the government hospital and also the "lemongrass water".  As he did not really believe in the latter unless proven scientifically and medically, he told me it must have been that my body gave a good response to the former.  I also thought that it must have also been due to the fact that I sought very early treatment.  Alhamdulillah!  Nevertheless, the antibiotics, not sure if it's the same type that I received at the government hospital, together with other prescriptions, still continued, pumped or dripped directly into my blood streams, until Day 7, Thursday, 30 July 2015 at the private specialist hospital.  The hospital also X-rayed my lungs and did the ultrasound scan on my internal organs such as kidneys, bladder, etc to check for any abnormality and peculiarity which could be caused by the lepto bacteria.  For the record, I celebrated my birthday there on 28 July, "together" with Amy Search, but of course he was somewhere else I didn't (bother to) know.  "Together" we share the same birthdate...

Day 7, Thursday, 30 July 2015 through 7 days after that and beyond: After getting discharged from the private specialist hospital on Day 7, I still had to take 2 types of antibiotics orally for a week.  Everything went back to normal but I still had thigh and calf muscle aches throughout the oral treatment.  I was not sure if it was due to the antibiotics or the lepto or both.  Even after I finished the antibiotics, I still felt not fully fit for a few more days.  But after that, I felt completely like my "normal" pre-lepto self again.  Alhamdulillah...

p/s: This entry is dedicated to our current country leaders and their ass-lickers who continuously "kencing" us their people and piss us the grassroots off.  Without doubt their nauseous act is worse and more disgusting than "kencing tikus".