A simple strand of RNA

Been very busy and tired lately..BH came down with dengue heammorhagic fever last sat. Has been in hospital since the Thursday after...a whole week plus now of fever and chills. Why? All because of a simple single strand of RNA, enclosed in a capsule, that doesn't need to eat, doesn't have sex ( gender or action) but just replicates. The dengue virus, a tiny little fler but wrecks havoc even in the largest and strongest of men. And like all viruses, its uses our own bodies genetic material to replicate. Then if that weren't enough, this tiny little fler would cause your capilarries to leak and bleed, so your platelets have to go clog up the leak. And then, if your platelets can't cope, you bleed, lose fluids and go into shock. Untreated, 50% of people that go into shock die. There is no cure. No antiviral, no immunisation...just your own immune response to deal with it. Supportive treatment, ie meds for fever, iv fluids and blood if necessary are given once a person is hospitalised. But thats it. The rest is up to the person.

Its really a very stupid virus...if the host dies, it dies with it. If the host survives, its still dies. It's only hope is to replicate into sufficient amounts and hope that its accomplice, the Aedes Aegypti mosquito will transmit it into another host. Which apparently is working very well for this tiny fella, cos throw a stone into a crowd, and its likely you'll hit someone who had this disease before. I got it at 12. And spending time with BH in hospital, I met many other people who had it, are having it or know someone who had it. Even a few of my patients have had it.

It has been a trying time for BH, his family and me. We saw how the fever went up to 40.5 degrees, how he would shiver though he was burning up and how the rashes look, all over his hands and legs. At one point, his finger nails were blue and his platelet count hit 9 ( Normal is 150 and up) per mmol-9 . They had to give him plasma and platelets and following a Chinese remedy, my dad pounded papaya leaf and we gave him the extract to drink. His mums been cooking frogs with bitter gourd. Almost everyone in that same ward told us the same thing, that this would work and the night we gave it to him, his fever came down.

Right now, he's still in hospital, fever been coming down. Sometimes he gets mild fever, but otherwise recovering. Platelet counts went up , so now its just a matter of rest. It's actually very scary how a small, tiny little things could have brought down my BH...many times bigger, stronger and definitely smarter. Suffice to say, it was one of the scarriest times of my life so far..
So everyone, please get rid of any stagnant water and use mosquito coils at night. We still don't know where BH got bitten, but based on the stories I hear, it's endemic in the Klang Valley. Which means, its happening everywhere. You really don't wanna go through this and you really don't want your loved ones too either. This simple strand of RNA is trouble with a capital T.

On a more personal note, I hope all the drama is finally over. This past month has been crazy for me...starting with my dad's cataract op and an exam on the same day, to my mother having a mild cancer scare and surgery a week later, to BH falling sick a week after that. Thankfully mum and dad ok...now just BH has to get better. Then maybe I can rest.;)