I Have Dengue

Sep 08, 2023

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Today, I’m delving into my journey with dengue and the ups and downs of the last week. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you’d like to support my work for $5/month, join the community, and receive access to all paywalled posts, do subscribe.

Well I'm on day 7 of Dengue. It's my second time having it. Last time was about 8 years ago, and I caught it 3 days before I had to fly to Mexico on a 55-hour cross-world journey. I remember finding out that I had Dengue after I had arrived at my parents’ house. We had assumed that it wasn't Dengue since we caught it at the same time as our friends.

But I've learned since then that it's actually really common to catch Dengue together with other people, because the same Dengue-carrying mosquito will often sting many or most people in a group.
*Which is also why you should wear mossie spray if you’re around mosquitos and other people when you have the disease.

Which is why there is absolutely no correlation to the fact that I consumed multiple bottles of wine with my girlfriend Tyler — who was just getting over Dengue — the night before my symptoms started to set in.

I woke up Saturday morning with what felt like an atrocious hangover. I had meanwhile promised to take Fraser's friends who are visiting from Scotland to my Saturday morning Orion sauna and ice bath ritual. I started feeling like I was coming down with something, but having no idea how severe it could be — or if it was still just the hangover — I thought I would just go and try to sweat out whatever it was in the sauna.

This didn't work out so well. At one point in the sauna, I actually felt like I had the chills. Which isn't really what you want to feel when you're in the sauna. I was barely able to drive myself home.

Once I made it home, I crawled onto the sofa. Where I fell into a steaming pit of high fever, aches, pains, excruciating migraine, and all the other fun gifts dengue has to give.

What’s my 2nd dengue journey been like?

The first 4 days, I could barely move, and barely did move… except from the sofa to the bed and back again. And even then, often with a lot of help from Fraser. Yesterday, the fever and migraine and body aches were mostly gone but I was feeling lightheaded and dizzy due to low blood platelets (my girlfriend in Bali pointed out that platelet levels are lowest on days 5 and 6 of Dengue).

Many people experience extreme nausea, but didn’t have any for the first four days. On day 5 I felt really nauseous and threw up, but it seems to have been a one-off. I’ve felt nauseous since, particularly due to low platelets making me dizzy, in combination with the heat, but it’s under control.

I'm now on day 7, and I'm much better. My platelets are still pretty low, so I'm monitoring them with daily trips to the clinic for tests. I've been taking papaya leaf tea capsules, since actual papaya leaf tea makes me want to vom. And I did actually vom a couple days ago, so I'm not wanting to tempt fate.

(Papaya leaf tea is the ultimate natural Dengue cure, and papaya trees grow everywhere here in Thailand. When you tell anyone on Koh Phangan that you have dengue, their immediate response is to remind you to drink your papaya leaf tea. Which is so annoying but if I think about it, I believe I offer the same advice so…)

But of course, we're having a 9 to 5pm power cut today, so I'm currently in the middle of my living room on my yoga mat in an old bikini top, because that's where the best cross breeze can be experienced in my house.

Is Dengue bad on Koh Phangan rn?

A new mom friend coming to the island for the first time with her five-month-old baby called me practically in tears a few weeks ago. She’d just arrived on Koh Samui with her daughter and husband and were coming to Phangan the next day. The only thing she was worried about bringing her daughter here was Dengue. And the taxi driver who picked them up from the airport and took them to their hotel on Samui spent the entire 15-minute journey telling her how bad Dengue is on the islands right now.

I listened to this and reassured her that it wasn’t that bad. And it wasn’t that bad, as far as I knew. I did know a couple people with dengue but when you live on a tropical island, there’s almost always a couple people with dengue. And then I started hearing about more and more cases.

Every case I’ve heard of seems to have been picked up from Zen beach or thereabouts. I believe I caught dengue at Hemmingway’s, where we do our Lakeside Literati meetings every Thursday.

So yes, it seems that Dengue is in season here on Koh Phangan. If you really want to avoid it, avoid Sri Thanu.

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So this was supposed to just be a quick note to let you guys know that there's not going to be an article this week, but it's quite a lengthy way of letting you know. And it’s basically turned into an article.

I have also managed to finish the entire series of Schitt’s Creek and started reading Atlas Shrugged which makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something.

Have a great weekend guys and catch you next week! Go outside and live it for me!

In the meantime, here’s some TikToks I made while I’ve had dengue that might make you chuckle: