Reid sent this optimistic press release on a
promising new one- dose treatment for malaria, which brought back vivid memories of my brush with an almost- lethal case of Zimbabwe falciparum in the nineties.
The writer remembers: "I have personally had malaria... and can say that it is a deeply painful and depleting experience that leaves you in ruins, unable to care for your family, and in a very poor health if you survive." The first is indisputable, and the last possible-- I eventually recovered (it took all summer) but who knows what cascades of trouble it might have unleashed down the line? Certainly I never was in as perfect health after as I was before-- but I did also get old!
The article reminded me of this spooky uninhabited elephant hunter's camp near Hwange, although I didn't get my malaria there...
And this birder's paradise in the hot lowlands on the muddy shores of Kariba, where elephants would charge the Rover between sightings of life list species. There, I did get it... though I didn't know until I got back to New Mexico, where I almost died before anyone accepted that I knew what I was talking about, and that I did not "just" have some generic thing called "malaria" but a particular species,
Plasmodium falciparum.
Lots more to say about the experience, and the enormous and endlessly fascinating subject of parasite evolution, if anyone is interested...
7 comments:
Malaria and african trypanosomiasis
have probably done more to preserve wilderness then unesco and wwf together
Because of the prodigious amounts I can eat at a single sitting, I have always been accused of having a tapeworm. And I DO have "blastocistus hominus"(sp?) that I likely picked up while in Africa many years ago. The treatment is so tiresome and ineffective(and EXPENSIVE!), that I long ago decided to just be-as-one with my blastocistus hominus, and we've gotten along just fine all these years, thank you!....L.B.
One of my uncles got malaria when he was wounded in Burma during WWII. He used to get short bouts of it every summer for the rest of his life, even sixty years later.
Bob -- there are four major human types of malaria. Three of them are still devilishly recurrent like your uncle's.
The fourth, falciparum, is the deadliest and often drug resistant, but the easiest to get out of your system once you get it. I should write more about this.
Oh malaria, that was my christmas present from Africa a couple years back. I got lucky though and my Dr. back home was quick to realize I knew what I had (mostly because I could rule out the other obvious possibility having had that one the year before- halucinating during one's Ph.D. interviews makes for interesting times) and get me on drugs immediatly. Still spent 3 months recovering.
Therese-- do you have my email? Would like to discuss malaria more. A biochemist suggests it and/ or anti- malarials as stressors and triggers for later troubles in genetically susceptible individuals-- like me-- interesting stuff. If you don't have it try "ebodio- at- gilanet- dot- com"
Thanks for sharing the post here. Keep up the good work. All the best.
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