Still Kicking
The (apparent) dengue fever hasn’t gone away yet. It’s mild, that’s for sure. But every day now for the past week I have had nausea, after meals and when I wake up in the mornings. My roommate thinks that perhaps I got knocked up in Costa Rica. It’s possible.
I also get a fever now and then, body aches and generally feel crappy. Also, I’ve developed a rash on my arms, a sort of smoking gun for dengue fever. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow that should begin to confirm the virus. I’ll keep you posted.
UPDATE, 2/28: Just got back from Doctor #2, the first I’ve seen since I got back to the States. He thought I was crazy, but did a range of tests. Let’s just say he was very thorough. And although I’m no closer to knowing whether or not I have dengue fever, I can say now that my testicles are in excellent shape (not joking), according to the Doc. He has referred me to a specialist, so I’ll be seeing a third doctor soon to try to nail down the dengue question.
UPDATE, 3/4: Doctor #3 put me through another battery of tests. I have now given a total of about a dozen “tubes” of blood samples, so I think I’m done giving blood. If they want any more blood, they can go to Costa Rica and get it from the mosquito that gave me this thing. This Doc didn’t believe I have dengue, but he tested for it anyway, at my insistence. Results due in a few days. In the meantime, I am now in my 12th day of nausea. (I’ve only had a noticeable fever a few times, here and there.)
UPDATE, 3/14: The sickness without a name lasted a full 14 days, and is long gone. Remarkably, the dengue test is STILL not back yet, so I remain clueless as to the actual nature of whatever it was that was ailing me. Oh well, all’s well that ends well, right? People ask: Was the trip worth it, what with you getting sick and all? And I answer: Hell yeah! No, make that, Hell yeah!! with two exclamation points. I only started getting sick the last couple of days, and even then it wasn’t enough to confine me to the hotel room. The trip was extraordinary, and I’m looking forward to plotting my next venture, perhaps in August.
UPDATE, 4/22: My esteemed doctor has yet to provide me with dengue test results. So I’m just gonna call it myself: it was dengue. Case closed; I’m moving on.
Back In New York
I’m back home. I’ve been trying to post some photos here, but it looks like my camera card may have been killed. I’m going to run a recovery program and see what happens.
There are many things I will miss about Costa Rica, but here is a list of what I will definitely not miss:
- Mosquitoes, chiggers, roosters. I was roused at 2 in the morning by one rooster, and someone shouted from a tent near mine, Is that rooster retarded?
- Not being able to flush toilet paper. Most sewer pipes are too weak to handle it. Instead, you place it in the waste bin beside the toilet. Yeah, it is gross.
- Washing my clothes in the sink.
- Did I mention the mosquitoes and chiggers?
- The disturbingly out-of-whack keys on computer keyboards. I just want an apostrophe, for crying out loud. That is all I ask for.
- The sheer complexity of ordinary tasks due to language/cultural barriers. I tried for three days to locate a post office in Puerto Viejo so that I could mail some postcards. When I finally found it, it was not even open. The lady that runs it does not come in until 1 in the afternoon, and even then she dusts off her desk a little and twiddles her thumbs and then calls it a day a couple hours later.
- The local beer. The more I drink, the crappier I realize it is.
- Seeing sad dogs that are in need of medical attention. Tons of them. I also saw three wild horses grazing in garbage.
- Mud puddles.
- Having to figure out how many dollars it is that I am spending in Costa Rican colones. One dollar is roughly 500 colones — and so I feel like a rock star withdrawing 100,000.
- The fried stuff. Costa Ricans apparently love food fried to a golden crisp. Even the hospital cafeteria offered what must be an unhealthy amount of fried pockets of various kinds of meat.
- Of course it will be nice to actually talk to you people again, rather than having to write down all my thoughts and try to find an Internet cafe.
La Fortuna
The five-hour bus ride northwest (about 90 miles) to La Fortuna was long-winded, yes, but completely worth it. I got to see cows grazing on impossibly steep mountainsides, trees dangling precariously off the edges, ordinary people going about their daily business in the striking morning light.
Finally we cruised into town, and as I’m getting off the bus I see it, that startling local landmark: the Arenal Volcano. It’s massive but does look somewhat unassuming. I’m just a mountain, not a killer, it seems to plead. But maybe it seems so harmless because I cannot yet hear the deep rumbling of lava underneath. Yet. Supposedly it really gets going in the evenings. Something to lull me to sleep tonight.
Dang This Dengue Fever
I’m fine. I feel pretty good tonight. I’m not going to die. But …
I haven’t been feeling my usual best ever since that bus ride to hell that I wrote about below. And last night I developed a high fever and chills. My eyes were red, my stomach was unsettled, and then I got a bit of a cough. And I was ridiculously tired and worn down.
Today I felt better. The fever had receded, and things seemed OK, but the first thing I did was book another night in San Jose and then went to a hospital to get things checked out. I spent four hours navigating the clinic, finding an English-speaking doctor, getting examined, having blood work done, finding a pharmacy that has Tylenol (harder than you would think).
My white blood cell count is down so something is definitely going on. Dr. Guerra’s conclusion: it’s probably a virus, most likely mild dengue fever spread by one of my mosquito friends. I won’t know for sure until I get back to the States and get more blood work done (it takes a week for dengue fever to show up positively in blood work).
I’ll recover fully, I swear. It’s kind of like the flu. A tropical flu. And like I said, so far tonight I feel fine, though my body aches a bit. I just have to drink lots of water and take Tylenol if the fever returns. It is not contagious from person to person.
This is one of those little risks you take. It happens sometimes. It happened 26,440 times in Costa Rica alone last year (country-by-country dengue fever statistics here), and all over the world there are millions of cases a year.
I’m still taking in the sights and sounds of San Jose, and if I feel up to it, I’m going to La Fortuna in the morning so I can see that active volcano. I’ve had a fantastic time here, and this little bug ain’t gonna change that.
Highway to Hell
Thursday was one of those days where everything was needlessly, hopelessly complicated. So you see, it’s not all fun and sun and chiggers down here.
I started my day bright and early, at the first crack of a rooster. The plan: view the sunrise over the Caribbean, sitting in awe near some palm trees, which always make me smile. It was nice. And I felt really small in this vast world. I stepped out onto some chunks of coral reef (upheaved and pushed ashore by an earthquake years ago), before realizing that walking on coral probably wasn’t the most ecofriendly decision ever.
I took a morning bus north to the port town of Limon, with the intention of transferring to another bus heading to a region called Sarapiqui. Sarapiqui is not a major tourist destination, but I was told there would be “local” bus going there that I could catch along a busy avenue by what looked like a row of abandoned warehouses. Don’t worry, I was told, this bus passes by, like, every hour or something. Give or take six hours.
I waited on the wrong side of the avenue on purpose. That’s because on my side I had protection, city employees who were busy installing a road sign. On the other side were some unsavory types. You should know that Limon is the country’s most high-crime city. Tourists avoid it, stopping in only long enough to transfer out of there. And so I was already on high alert. I would just run across the street and flag down the bus when I saw it.
Many buses passed by, of all shapes and colors (bright colors!) and of all makes and models. (One was an old yellow school bus on which someone had simply spray-painted an “X” over the word “SCHOOL.”) None of those was my bus. I waited an hour and a half, slow baking in the unforgiving sun. I watched a shirtless man splashing around in a ditch, looking for food. A couple of crack hos lingered on the lot across the street. It was right about when my worker buddies were wrapping up the sign installation and getting ready to leave that I noticed one of the guys across the street had set fire to some clothing on the sidewalk — and that’s when I decided a change of plans was in order.
Back to San Jose. Go to San Jose and you get a big plush bus with a designated seat number and set departure times, from an actual honest-to-God station filled with seminormal people. But even this plan was fraught with problems. The seat space was, shall we say, cozy, and so my knees were up near my chin. I was tired and just wanted the trip over. Unfortunately it was a five-hour ordeal.
In his reflective 1970s style reflective sunglasses, the dude behind the wheel looked a bit like the coup-installed leader of a banana republic. And I’m sure he’s a competent enough driver, but he was making some very questionable passing maneuvers. Around mountainside bends. In the rain. While flipping through radio stations and eating ice cream.
Finally, as the salsa music reached a rump-shaking crescendo, I spotted the city of San Jose. Land of opportunity as well as air pollution.
