I have a confession to make...the last blog I wrote, I was alot less fine than I led on.In fact the 29th was the first day in a long time that I was even able to walk around and sit up for long periods of time. From the 26th of December to the 2nd of January, I was officially sick with Dengue fever. It is essentially a disease that is transmitted by mosquitoes and it gives you a fever, full body aches, headaches, joint pain, nausea, loss of appetite, faintness, weakness, and sleepyness. Lucky me, I got every one of those symptoms and then some....
It all started on the 26th, we went to dinner at a really fancy restaurant for my sisters birthday and it was all I could do not to put my head on the table and cry. My mother noticed that I hardly ate anything and that I was not very talkative/ active. That night she took me to the hospital where I was poked and prodded, they took some tests and some blood and gave me a prescription for heat exhaustion (because all my tests came out normal) and sent me on my way. The next day, after sleeping pretty much all day, fainting on my floor and turning pretty much yellow, my mom took me back to the hospital demanding they do more tests because there was obviously something wrong with me! By this point I couldn't eat anything nor could I spend very much time sitting up nor standing. They ran more tests and found out that my white blood cell count (it could have been red, i don't remember) had taken a dive, and I had become extremely dehydrated, I spent the night in the Hospital hooked up to an IV and every couple of hours people took more blood samples to see how I was faring. The diagnosis came back as Dengue fever and it is safe to say that my host mom was not impressed with the miss diagnosis. By the time I got home from the hospital the next day, I had 6 new needle pokes, I was no longer yellow and I was on a bunch of different medication. One of which is to get rid of the parasite that they found out that I have. That one I am still working on getting rid of :)
8 days of being house/ bed ridden, tons of sleep, lots of pills, mass amounts of water and Gatorade and 2 trips to the hospital later, I am finally better! This was one Bolivian experience that I would have been happy to skip out on, But on the plus side Dengue is like the chicken pox, once you get it, there is a very very very small chance that you will ever get it again...THANK GOSH!
Due to being sick, I was unable to go out and do anything too terribly exciting for New Years, but I was ok with that. I spent the New Years at home with my family, we had a party at my house for our church, there was food and music and lots of people and celebrations. When it came to the fireworks and cheering...I thought that my brain was going to explode but other than that, I was feeling a lot better than previous days but still not 100%.
Bolivians celebrate the new years with four main traditions. 1. blow up the sky with as many fireworks as humanly possible. 2.At midnight you need to go to an upper level of a house, building,etc...stand on a chair and eat grapes. It is supposed to bring you good luck for the new years. 3. Everyone throws fake money around...it is supposed to bring you riches in the year to come. 4. at the new years parties, when dawn breaks everyone eats soup ( like at 5 am, because ALL the parties are still going on) it is cleansing and helps with good health for the year to come. I dont know if any of these traditions work but i did them all, so lets see how this year goes. Despite still being on the way back to good health, I stayed up until 7:30 AM with my amazing host sister Goldy, we had silly string wars, lit off fireworks, ate food, watched movies, laughed...ALOT, and wore crazy hats, glasses,wigs etc. It was a great way to start the New Year. Happy 2012 to everyone!!!!!!! Cant believe I have passed my 4 month mark!
Final words of wisdom...BEWARE OF DEMON MOSQUITOES!
Oh, P.S...I am officially a red head.
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