The Gamut of Options

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, that there is nothing worse than watching a loved one suffer.

The longer Adam’s fever persists despite the malaria medication, the more I wonder if it’s not malaria after all, so I put on my impromptu doctor’s coat once again.

After he takes Tylenol, his fever diminishes and he sweats profusely, which, in an already hot climate, isn’t much fun at all. So I helped him take a warmish bath this morning and I looked at all of his scratched/mangled mosquito bites to see if any of them was infected, to see if I could determine an alternate cause of the fever.

There was one bite on the back of his leg that looked especially gory, so we decided in our two-person consensus that perhaps the fever was not malaria-related, but infection-related.

Understand that at any one point, Adam and I probably have a combined total of 100-200 mosquito bites so tracking down one that might be infected isn’t as easy or obvious as it sounds.

Even so, I’m trying my best to take care of Adam, and minimize his effort and of course his suffering. Tonight he’ll take the third dosage of the malaria medicine, but also continue on the ampicillin treatment he started this afternoon. If we treat enough symptoms, perhaps the actual disease will be conquered!

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He and I have been having extensive conversations about the kind of life we’d like to live when we get home, taking away from this experience already the importance of fresh foods and vegetables.

Thus while I heal Adam I’m also trying to better handle my stress, by, instead of eating or smoking, listening to music (a little Brandenburg Concerto) and devouring articles for my literature review. YES, MOM, I AM NOT SMOKING.

I cannot imagine my stress level at home could be higher than this is, so perhaps being able to minimize the effects here I can take that as a lesson to practice at home as well. Finding good things to take away from this time, where all I really want to do is wave some sort of magic wand to make Adam better -- that’s the goal.