Malaria Watch Day Two; No Longer Watching.

I woke up this morning feeling fine.  I had a low-grade fever at 5:30am, but went on to work.

I got a call at 10:15 from a 301 Area code, and had a feeling it was bad news.

"Your blood smear this morning was positive, how fast can you get back to the NIH?"

*sigh*

So here I sit, dosed with my first round of Chloroquine (the side effects look pretty awful, but at least they'll be temporary).

I'm not supposed to check out until 48 hours from now at the earliest, after I have my last dose of the medication.

But I also can't leave until I have two successive negative blood smears for malaria.

First of all, let me assure you this does not mean the vaccine has failed.  I was in a group that took a lower dose of the vaccine, the researchers thought it would probably not prove effective.  So *shrug* I'm a datapoint in *that* part of the study.

Anyone feeling the need to line up and say, "I told you so!" be my guest.  I don't mind.  I knew this was a risk, and I knew this was a good thing, I'm not sorry.

I miss being home, though.  It's so much easier to weather a fever on your own couch.

Can't tell if my growing discomfort is psychosomatic, the onset of the malaria (so far, it's all fever symptoms, achy joints, dry eyes), or the onset of the cure (there are a lot of little malaria bad-guys that are going to die in my blood stream in the next 24 hours, it's going to be uncomfortable while my liver and kidneys flush them out).

If I feel up to it later, I'll write a little about my room.  My roommate. 

Think I'm just going to curl up and take a nap now.