Attack of the Crohn's

Attack of the Crohn's
(well at least something similar)
Or
Mosquito bait--ooh ha ha!

Ah, the mission. What a wonderful time of learning and growth, serving and love, and, (if you are lucky enough to go to a third world country), interesting parasites and other various and sundry diseases. My mission had all of these and more, so much so that at times I was brought to ponder how much my cup was really running over, especially with those last two items. This story is about one such occasion. My companion and I were spending most of our time in an out of the way area filled with mud holes and shacks. The area we were working in was about fifty minutes walking from our apartment and in order to get there we needed to climb up and over a pretty large hill. Going to our area the hill sloped up and up, while on the back side it dropped precipitously into what is known in Brazil as a “favela” and would be best described here as a very poor neighborhood. (see diagram 1 below)

  Diagram 1
Well one day we were hard at work and we walked through an area with a bunch of mosquitoes. At this point in the story we need a little background information. We lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building and right next to a river. (See diagram 2)

Diagram 2

I use the term “river” loosely here seeing as how it was really a poop infused mosquito breeding ground. However I am quite sure that it is a beautiful river outside of town, so river will suffice. Living so close to the “river” we had a constant supply of mosquitoes in our house. So many in fact that, after a long nights sleep, our sheets would be spotted with blood where mosquitoes had been

Another diagram

crushed and behind the fan in our room would be a layer of mosquitoes at least a centimeter thick. (yup, another diagram) We had tried everything from burning these nasty smelling (as well as toxic and carcinogenic for sure) mosquito repellant uh… burny things, to simply hiding under our sheets. Well, that’s actually all we tired until the mission got around to buying us some proper plug in mosquito repellant things. Anyway, lets get back to the story at hand. If you will remember my companion and I were walking in a mosquito infested area. (Yeah I really don’t know what this little aside added to the story but it took a while to write and draw the diagram so it stays. If nothing else it goes to establish the conditions that lead to the rest of this story.) And without further ado, here is the rest of the story.
I had an odd thought as we were walking through a fairly dense cloud of the little buggers. It went like this. “Man that would suck if I got Dengue.” I know pretty profound huh. Well it was odd seeing as how I slept in a veritable cloud of the winged beasts every night.
Fast forward to the next day. We were back in our area and another grueling day was about to come to a close. So we started back up the monster hill to go back to our house. When we were about half way up the hill I noticed that I was getting tired climbing it. Which was odd seeing as how I had been in the area for a while and the hill never gave me any problems before. We continued on. On the other side I noticed that my eyes hurt pretty bad. Further on I started needing to go to the bathroom pretty bad. Taken altogether these symptoms were adding up to something and when I got home that something hit me… (see diagram 4)

Diagram 4

…Like a ton of bricks dropped on my back actually. That night was a tough one. I didn’t sleep a wink and was moaning and tossing all night. You see, I had contracted dengue fever (sometimes lovingly referred to as break bone fever) from a mosquito in my area.
Let me describe to you the details. My eyes felt like they were going to explode out of my head. My back hurt so bad that I (honestly) thought that I had brwould never be over the pain. I had no strength and threw up quite often. (See Diagram 5)

Diagram 5

But the best part by far was the bowel movements. (Editor’s warning: some of the following descriptions may not be suitable for all readers. If you want to read it you will have to decipher my secret code. Ok just highlight the following text if you want the gory details.)
IT was nothing but mucous. Seriously what was left over in the bowl looked like an elephant had blown its nose. Just like snot or the stuff in the back or your throat when you are sick. For seven days it was like that and I had to take a shower every time I went to the bathroom cause it was so raw after a while and toilet paper had really met its match with this stuff. One touch and it was totally saturated! Good thing was that it didn’t really hurt. Till about day 8. Then it turned hard again and bloody. Never has a bowel movement been so much torture. This was more of an infection after the fact though and only partly related to the dengue.
Ok it’s over. Anyway you get the idea.
All of these symptoms could have been alleviated to some degree if my retarded district leader had gotten the details right from our mission presidents wife (who was an RN). He, however, sadly did not do so. You see the mixup came when he told me that I wasn’t supposed to use Tylenol. This mixup could have occurred for one of two reasons. First, perhaps he is simply an idiot, and got the message wrong. Second, he was jealous of all Americans. I’d like to think it was the first one myself (note: I said I’d like to). Needless to say I was very perturbed to find out that I had suffered more than I needed to. He did however get a part of the message right and told me that I needed to drink water with salt and sugar in multiple times a day to keep some minerals and food in me. And I tried to do just that, it was so nasty though, that I simply couldn’t.
Speaking of food, I had no appetite for about a week and really wasted away quite a bit during this ordeal. So there I was for a week straight tossing and turning, moaning and whimpering, taking my companions pillow to put under my back and taking showers ten times a day or more. My companion probably loved the first few days cause he got to say with me all day but soon they put me with another Elder that couldn’t work due to his foot. You see the day he got into Brazil, or shortly thereafter, he got bit by a bug and his foot and it had swollen up to become an elephantine monstrosity. I’ll spare you all the diagram.
Nevertheless, all things must come to an end sooner or later in this life and so too did my fever. So it was that 8 days of bedridden torture and 20 or so pounds later, I was feeling better. The mission president’s wife told me that I’d better not eat anything greasy or heavy at first so I went out and got a hamburger and fries. Hey, it was the first time that I’d had an appetite in 8 days and it sounded oh so yummy. It was. So ends the story of my near death experience from my mission. It is a pretty good story looking back at it now. Although, I’d never want to do it again.