Surviving Dengue Fever: The Ultimate Honeymoon Misadventure

This month I was going to write this article about a couple Colombian Islands we visited last year. However, a month after Lily and I got married we flew from Mexico to Colorado and within a day of landing it appeared to us that we were bitten by mosquitoes in Mexico which gave us dengue fever and the symptoms showed once we were in Colorado. So, I thought it would be more appropriate to move the Colombian Islands off to next month and write about dengue fever and how “wonderful” it is. This is going to be very tongue-in-cheek and hopefully I can entertain you and provide some insight if you ever have the same issue. Instead of seeing pictures of us suffering I’ve selected some various photos of us around the world together 

10. Fatality rate

Dengue fever is a tropical and subtropical mosquito borne virus that has a very low fatality rate. The numbers I have seen show over 5 million cases a year and only 5,000 deaths. But with that said there’s going to be times that you wish you would just die.

9. 4 types

Turns out there are four types of dengue and once you have one of them you are immune to that one but if you get one of the other three then the results get even more complicated. There are two different vaccines that have come out in the last 10 years and one of them you can’t have unless you’ve had one of the dengue fevers so you can be protected against the other three.

8. Remedies

Throughout my 15 years in the Caribbean the biggest remedy I have heard is to boil papaya leaves and make a tea out of it. Guess what you don’t have a lot of in Colorado. That’s right, papaya trees. Other things that we read were papaya juice, guava juice, and basil oil. The reality is I’m not sure how much any of these actually help, because as far as I can tell it takes seven to ten days for your body to fight the virus. We have taken quite a bit of Tylenol, which does help with the pain, but they say to not take Advil or much aspirin because the aspirin will actually cause blood to enter your urine.

Zika Virus : Mosquitoes in the News

7. Non-related symptoms

Before I get to the symptoms of dengue fever, something that was “super exciting” and that I didn’t think of is the fact that your body’s immune system is down. This means non-related symptoms come into play including for us cold sores, out of sync menstrual cycle, passing a small gallstone, and jock itch (due to the sweating because of the fever). On top of all that we’ve got the Colorado dry air which makes it so you blow your nose and rocks come out.

6. Low appetite

The least annoying symptom is the fact that you’re just not that hungry and your family or friends have to force you to eat some food and to make sure you drink enough liquids. On the plus side though, it makes a great weight loss program.

5. Zero energy

Since you’re laid up for seven to ten days you have plenty of time to catch up on your favorite TV shows, but the irony is you have zero willpower to actually do it. You’re so worn out that you need to take naps during the day and then irony strikes again and you can’t sleep at night.

4. Headache

Interestingly for both of us it felt like a low pressure right behind our left eyes. So, I guess if we ever want to become the DC character Deadshot, with the eyepiece, we know what it’s going to feel like to have to replace our eyeball because there were times, I think we both felt like carving our eye out just to get the pressure off.

3. Fever

This is one that affected me more than Lily, but I would go from uncontrollable shivering to later on I would feel like I wanted to strip and hug the tile floor like a dog does during the summer. The good news here is I got a good exercise routine because there were times the shivering lasted for up to an hour until I finally warmed back up.

2. Nickname

The best symptom by far is what gives dengue fever its nickname of the bone breaker disease. You feel like your bones and your joints hurt. It’s not a body ache. It’s in your bones and joints. For me it was my hips and mid back and for Lily it was her back, arms, and legs. It got pretty intense that we kept moving around to try and find something comfortable but nothing worked. We did find heat pads helped alleviate a little of the pain.

1. Honeymoon

Since we just got married a month ago and this was the first time, we left the house in Mexico this definitely has to be the worst honeymoon ever in my opinion, but Lily said she read about one where the husband died. So, I guess there’s always that. God bless her for always looking at the bright side of things.

 

Captain Shane and Lily are past the halfway mark on their road to recovery, but to paraphrase Gloria Gaynor “we will survive.” If you’d like to check out our awesome Guiding Light cookbook and t-shirts, plus find out about out latest adventure, check out Nauti Custom Cars on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Shane McClellan has written for ALL AT SEA since 2016.