Did I Catch Dengue in Southeast Asia?

On the last day of volunteering near Vang Vieng, I went on a run early that morning and was feeling great at the time but just four hours later, right before we ate lunch, I was ready to lay down to sleep. It was a weird feeling and I really had no idea what had brought it on. Did I catch Dengue in Southeast Asia, either here or in Thailand?

By the time we took the crazy tuk tuk ride back into town, all I wanted to do was sleep. I checked my temperature that night and realized I had a fever in addition to a headache and cold sweats. I decided to head to the hospital that following morning if I woke up still feeling the same which I did.

Sunrise that morning after running

As soon as we ate breakfast, I was told how to get to the Vang Vieng hospital which was luckily just a short walk from where we were. But as short as it was, it seemed far for me. I had no energy, was light-headed and dizzy and still with a constant headache. My fever was down but I was feeling ill.

Walking up into the main lobby of the hospital, I knew I was in for an experience. This was actually the fourth hospital I’d now been to now since traveling through southeast Asia after my friend was sick about 4 weeks ago so nothing was too much of a surprise but then again, I still knew it would be memorable. I was actually a bit worried I’d come down with the same thing my friend had a month ago…. Dengue in Southeast Asia. I was starting out with all the same symptoms of Dengue such as nausea, headaches, fever, chills, sweats and dizziness. And of course, since I’d been staying at a place that was far out of the city, you’ll usually encounter more mosquitoes than you might otherwise in Southeast Asia.

Well, after paying in advance for a blood test and waiting thirty minutes for the results, I was eventually called back into the E.R. to visit with the doctor. As he looked up my blood test results he looked up at me and said in broken English “Malarie… No. Dengue… OK”. Umm, OK? Does that mean I have Dengue? I guess so, I thought. They prescribed the only two things you can take for Dengue and sent me on my way. I headed straight to the prescription desk and left the Vang Vieng hospital toting 2 packets of Paracetamol for fever and Oral Re-hydration Salts (Orange flavor – yum).

OK, so I’m said to have Dengue. At least I know what to expect and that is a LOT better news than getting Malaria which I was fearing since the symptoms of Malaria are extremely similar to that of Dengue. But leaving from that hospital, I still wasn’t feeling convinced of the diagnosis. Typically you need to take three blood tests over three days before they are supposed to be able to conclude Dengue. This was only the second day of symptoms and only one blood test. I had to leave Laos soon due to Visa issues and Vietnam was where we were headed next. However, I wasn’t in much shape yet to travel but I didn’t have much choice. We needed to get to Luang Prabang, north from here, in order to either catch a bus straight to Hanoi or take a flight. So after the hospital, we packed our bags and headed down the road to eat lunch and waited for the next bus heading toward Luang Prabang. By this time, I went from feeling bad to feeling like the grim reaper was going to pull up in the bus we were waiting on. I couldn’t eat, and couldn’t sleep but also couldn’t keep my head up.

Found in the hotel room, I’m just confused how hot water will become 10 minutes…

Whatever I came down with,, it was the roughest I’ve felt in a very long time. After thirty minutes of laying down on a restaurant table underneath the only fan in the place, my friend flagged down a bus on its way to Luang Prabang. We gathered up our bags and I headed straight for the back of the bus. I knew I was about to be in for the longest bus ride of my life. Its only about 150 kilometers from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang but the bus ride took almost 7 hours! I thought I was going to throw up the entire time and the poor sap next to me couldn’t help but notice the condition I was in and the plastic bag I was clutching in my right hand. It was an extremely bouncy ride all the way north through the mountains and of course, we were getting thrown side to side from all the twists and turns up and down the mountains.

Luckily, I made it without puking on my neighbor and we arrived into Luang Prabang about 7pm and I headed straight to the same guesthouse we were in weeks earlier. I was still feeling rough and ended up sleeping for the next day and a half, eating very little. Since we were planning to head to Vietnam I decided Hanoi was to be the first stop since it would be closest. And I was hoping to get to the hospital there to take another blood test to confirm what I had because even though I was still having Dengue symptoms, I still wasn’t convinced because I was experiencing things that my friend didn’t’t when she had Dengue. So Hanoi was the plan only there was one major problem…. the distance to Hanoi from here was only about 253 miles but the bus, the much cheaper option, was a 30 hour bus ride! Yeah, 30 hours!! Or, for three times the cost, you can hop a one hour flight. Since the prospect of taking a thirty hour non-stop bus in my condition didn’t sound too smart an idea, I decided to cut into the budget and opted to fly.

The airport in Luang Prabang, Laos. You can literally just walk from the restaurant across the street and up to the front door of the airport in about 60 seconds.

The next day, we grabbed up our bags and took a tuk tuk to the Luang Prabang airport. We hadn’t bought a ticket yet but I was pretty sure there would be vacant seats on the plane since it was so expensive to take such a short flight and sure enough, I was right. She said there were plenty of seats left on the flight that was leaving in 4 hours. We purchased two then walked back out of the airport, across the street to a small open air diner so my friend could get some beers in since she wasn’t too keen on flying, especially on a small prop plane which we would be taking…

When asking for the bathroom to wash our hands, this was where we were directed. A dirty bucket of water next to our table. I decided it was probably better not to ‘wash’ my hands…

The flight actually wasn’t too bad and even though it was less than an hour of flight time, they still served a meal on the plane. We touched down into Hanoi about 6pm and after getting through customs we hopped a local bus into town which only cost us $4000 ‘Dong’ which is about 20 cents. Luckily, I was feeling a lot better today since I had to travel so much but my stomach was feeling extremely ill. After finally finding a guesthouse around 10pm, I was quickly asleep and heading to the ‘L’Hôpital Francais de Hanoi’ which is the only international hospital that is in Hanoi. We I got there, it was a bit of a relief seeing a proper hospital with several doctors on staff. However, when I went in, I was describing my situation and told them I wanted to take a blood test but I kept getting confused. They were wanting me to take four tests instead of just one and I quickly found out how much more expensive this was going to be than the previous one I had gotten in Laos. The one in Vang Vieng had run me about $5 for a test while this one was trying to charge me about $155 to take these 4 tests and then meet with the doctor which costs another $55. Since I didn’t even know if I had Dengue for sure, I decided to just pay to see the doctor first and then maybe I’d have a better idea of what I really needed to do.

The meeting with the doctor was anything but normal. I walked in to his office and he sat there and just asked me in an ironic tone why I wanted to see him. After again describing my situation, he asked me what I wanted to do. Umm, ‘What’? I asked. What did I want to do? I wanted him to tell me what I had going on! Was I the doctor here?? He then told me that he felt I had some type of gastrointestinal infection and couldn’t confirm Dengue without the tests. He prescribed me two more things in addition to the two things I was already taking. One was a type of pill that is used to treat infections as serious as Anthrax (yeah strong stuff) and the other were pills that were nothing more than ‘good bacteria’ used to fight ‘bad bacteria’ (much the same as you’d find in yogurt).

Walking into a pharmacy an hour later back in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, I quickly realized how easy it is to just walk in and walk out with a prescription for anything you asked for as they don’t even ask for proper paperwork from a doctor. By the time I got all these pills pulled together, I was already into the fourth day of this illness and I really didn’t realize it would be three more days before I’d be feeling better. And to be honest, I don’t think the prescription had anything to do with it. More likely, it was probably just a natural recovery from rest and fluids. Either way I was extremely excited to be feeling normal again and definitely didn’t want to repeat this process. I still don’t know exactly what it was that I had. It could have been something that had bitten me or something I’d eaten but over the days, but just since arriving into Hanoi, I’d drank enough water that I could have started a plastic bottle recycling center from room 206 inside the Trademark Hotel in Hanoi.

Yes, I even managed to sneak in a Sprite in these three days

Now that I had made a full recovery, I was ready again to start traveling. Maybe I should start by seeing Hanoi first….