Dengue fever: sốt xuất huyết. Everybody dreads it. It’s peak Dengue season right now. I got it once, and almost everybody I know has some experience with this damn virus.
The Worst Thing Ever
I got hit with Dengue in October 2015. That was, without a doubt, the worst experience in my life so far.
Yea, I’ve lived a pretty sheltered life ?
But really — the type of Dengue that I contracted was definitely on the more severe scale.
It started on October 8th 2015 with a crushing headache. I remember getting up feeling like a jackhammer drilling inside my head. I sweated intensely despite my body shivering from the cold. It was as if I was in the Arctic; I had to bury myself under several blankets even though it was autumn outside.
With the crazy headache, I was barely conscious. All appetite gone. Took me 2 hours to eat two bowls of rice, and I was dozing on and off through that meal.
The thermometre read 39.5 degrees that day. Okay that’s bad, but I thought it was just a regular fever at first.
Until the second day. A normal fever should have a linear trajectory — the temperature should go down steadily. Mine was constantly fluctuating. So I had a Medlatec technician come over and do a blood test. My blood platelet (tiểu cầu) count was 126. The normal range is supposed to be 150 – 450, so I officially had Dengue now. Great.
It only got worse. Two days later my platelet count went down to 49. They told me to get to a hospital immediately as this is approaching dangerous territory.
So off I went to Thanh Nhàn hospital. It was October 11th. I got admitted at 9 pm. My dad bought me a blanket and pillow. I was assigned a tiny bed, like a bunk bed, on the 10th floor of the hospital. I shared the bed with 2 other guys. It gets pretty crowded during peak Dengue season.
It didn’t help that the nurse told me to stay awake and watch out for the IV bottles. If the bottle got empty, I’d have to notify them and they’d replace it. Really??
An Unpleasant Hospital Stay
I ended up spending 6 days in the hospital. Overall, it was an extremely unpleasant experience.
The toilet at the hospital was filled with shit. It was disgusting. I had to carry the IV stick, with the needle still in my vein, and walked home to take a damn poop. Fortunately my house is only a 5 minute walk from the hospital.
The night of the 2nd day at the hospital, the headache progressed to a point of insanity. Remember those scenes from Journey To The West (Tây Du Ký) where Monkey had those unbearable headaches from the gold ring around his head? It really was that painful. Felt like multiple grenades going off inside my brain. I had to tie a towel around my forehead and tighten it to alleviate and distract myself from the pain.
And then every day, I had to get up at 5 am for a blood test. I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards because the hospital was always crowded and noisy. Sleep deprivation while sick is not fun.
On October 13th I started to feel an intense stomachache. As if the headache wasn’t enough. The doctor said this is because my eating habit had been messed up badly, so some stomach fluid was causing pain. I could still use the abdominal muscles to sneeze, get up, or have bowel movements just fine. But any time I hiccuped was crazy painful. Even walking was uncomfortable. Now I understand how people with chronic stomachache feels like.
In a way, at least I was still quite lucky in that my case of Dengue was rather mild. The guy on my bed had it much worse. He was vomiting and couldn’t eat. He had a constant fever of 38 degrees. At least I could still eat, so I did not lose a lot of weight. And then there was another girl in the room whose platelet count went down to 10. And she was having a period to boot. The doctors were ready to do a platelet transfusion on her.
The lowest my platelets got to was 34 on Oct 14th. I felt so brittle. All I could think about was the moment my platelet count would go up, and then I could get home.
The End
It wasn’t until October 16th that I was told my platelets went back to 71. It would only be upwards from now. The doctor allowed me to go home.
I was so, so happy. I got my last IV injection at 11 am that day, and I just lied there and counted every last drop from the bottle. Around 1.30 pm, the bottle was empty. I called a nurse to help me get the needle off. That’s it!
I packed my stuff, gave my bedmate a firm handshake, wished him luck, and off I went. I felt like a freeman just out from prison. The first thing I did after getting home? 10 pull-ups. After 10 days bed-bound, I missed being physically active a lot.
Dengue Around Me
So that was my experience with Dengue. Phong also got hit around August 2017 when we were living in the Lê Trọng Tấn house. I couldn’t really understand it at the time, as I was pretty careless with mosquito prevention while Phong was doing everything to avoid those flying disease carriers.
The type of Dengue that Phong had was quite different from mine. He didn’t have as much of a crushing headache, but there were heavy rashes on his skin which I didn’t have any.
And then, just now, he got Dengue again… in November 2019. Somehow, the fever only lasted 4 days. Platelet count dipped to 129, then quickly shot back to 170. He was back running and shit on the 5th day. That is unbelievably mild for Dengue.
Phong’s dad also had a severe case of Dengue in 2013 where he lost 8 kg after 2 weeks of hospitalisation. My dad, somehow, has never contracted Dengue in all his 56 years.
Never Again
I really don’t wish that Dengue experience on my worst enemy. It was… bad. Nightmarish. All your strength and mental sharpness are gone; you can’t do anything but lie on bed and hope for a quick recovery. In worse cases, kind of like mine and the guy next to me, there are some unpleasant side effects like vomitting, headache, stomachache, and skin irritation as well. Some people even die in more extreme cases.
When will they find a cure for mosquitoes? Just kill off all those little death machines already.