MicahJohn

I’m now on the upside of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF). Last Saturday I had a bad fever that didn’t let me do much other than sleep. Because I had heard about a few people in the area having dengue, I looked up the symptoms. One of the symptoms is a rash. Because I didn’t have a rash, I decided not to worry about dengue.

Tuesday morning, after several days feeling miserable and week, I noticed a rash on my arms. Fellow teachers at school who have had dengue said that’s what it looked like. They took me to the hospital.

At the hospital they checked my blood. My platelet count was real low (91,000/I don’t know). This was the confirmation they needed to diagnose me with DHF. They admitted me, stuck an IV in me, and wheeled me off to my room.

Thanks largely to a number of people praying, I began to almost immediately feel better. The hospital didn’t get a single feverish temperature reading on me.

While in the hospital I had several visitors. The director and assistant director of the EP program where I teach came to see me. One of the English teachers. Four faculty from the larger school EP is a part of, all of whom I had never met, one of whom was the assistant director of the school. Two of my students came. One of my neighbors came. A few American friends came.

Many of these people brought fruit. So far I’ve collected 3 large baskets full of fruit, a bag full of bananas, a bag of oranges, and a bag of guava. (I’ve also given some of this fruit away already as well).

After an uneventful night, the hospital checked by blood again and said I could go home. My platelet count is on the rise, but still not back to normal. They encouraged me to be very gentle brushing my teeth and to avoid anything that might present the risk of cutting myself. Apparently if I started bleeding right now it wouldn’t stop real fast.

Since getting home I’ve had another few visits. My room is admittedly a wreck. Keeping it clean wasn’t a real high priority in my feverish state the beginning of this week. So receiving visitors was a little awkward. Oh well.

I’ve been sitting upright too long now. I’m going to rest some more.

Last night my neighbor asked me to help his girlfriend translate something from English to Thai. It was an article on osteoporosis. I quite frankly don’t know many of the Thai words used to talk about osteoporosis.

As I was slowly crawling my way through the first paragraph of the three page article, my neighbor kept bringing me different things to eat and drink. First was a sleeve of Oreos. Next came a soda. After a few more minutes, honey coated bananas, then to top it all off a bottle of honey. The bottle is no smaller than a liter.

I finished none of these edibles any more than I finished translating the three pages about osteoporosis. When we had all decided that the Micah-as-translator approach was not the best option, I was asked to take the Oreos, the soda, the bananas, and the honey with me. Excluding the soda which I finished, they are all now in my refrigerator. Ants make keeping anything edible anywhere but in the fridge nearly impossible.

Tomorrow morning I have a parent teacher meeting. Knowing that their parents were going to see their grades, a number of students asked if they could turn in homework late. I said yes.

After school I got busy grading, they got busy doing homework. Around 8:00pm after most of the students had left, I noticed that the handwriting on one kid’s paper was dramatically different than the handwriting on another assignment with the same name on it.

As I looked closer this was true of a number of the assignments turned in by various students. I also noticed that some of the students who had been doing work had not turned in any work. It’s great that friends are willing to stay after school and help each other with homework. It is not great if the “help” given involves putting one person’s name on another person’s work.

I was pretty frustrated. I had stayed late grading work that ought not even to have been turned in. I had spent time entering grades into my grade book. I then had to spend time reentering zeros over the scores I’d entered.

2s and 7s are quite different from one student to another.