Loni got Dengue when she was visiting a cacao plantation a few hours outside of the city of Itabuna. Dengue is trasmitted by the bite of a certain type of an infected mosquito. Here, the dangerous type of mosquito has a black and white zebra stripe pattern on its back. When she first got Dengue, Loni was with her boyfriend's family in Itabuna and spent the majority of toughest parts of the fever with them and in the hospital. She returned to our apartment early this week but has still been feeling pretty lousy.
Last night she was feeling particuarly bad to the point where she was getting scared so we called someone with a car and headed to the emergency room. While in the car, I was having flashbacks of my time as a resident director in Ecuador with OSU's study abroad program. I went to various dentists, hospitals and pharmacies so many times with students that by the end of the semester I was practically on a first name basis with all of the attendants there.
Like in Ecuador and in China, the hospital in Ilhéus was bare bones and no frills. After an excruciatingly long process of translating and filling in paperwork, Loni had an exam and bloodwork and we waited for the results. She found out that what she was feeling wasn't the onset of the severe type of the virus but just the fact that she hadn't fully recovered from the original flu. She has been ordered to rest for a few more days (some people take up to 3 weeks to recover from Dengue) and stay very hydrated.
As for me, it's been a pretty long and stressful week. I have the big monthly, university-wide cultural presentation tonight (Traveling in the U.S.A.) and then tomorrow I leave on a UESC field trip with the head of the department, Samuel, and his group of students studying the effects of tourism on Brazil. I think it's fitting to teach the acronym "TGIF" this morning to my beginning students of English.
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