Wednesday, September 30, 2015

O Malaria, where art thou?


I have been taking anti-malaria pills (doxycycline) since I landed in Finland. It seems that myself and another Canadian guy were the only ones advised by our doctors to take them. It's been a hot topic around here with people saying things like "Why cleanse your body, and then put poison in it?". My response was always that I feel totally fine, I know people that have had malaria (hey Melly!) and that I have a werid reaction to mosquito bites. So I felt better safe than sorry. However, today is the day that I am going to stop taking them. Don't worry parents, here is a map of the malaria zones in India and you can see clearly that both areas that I am traveling too are low-risk and that anti-malaria medication is usually not advised.


I don't know if I am just more in tune with my body now after being here a few weeks or what happened exactly but the last few days I have felt very nauseous almost immediately after taking the anti-malaria pill. I threw up twice and almost passed out twice in the last 4 days. I even went and bought bananas so that I would have something to eat with them in the mornings but alas, it did not work.

Don't worry, this isn't like the time when I was 5 and I dumped all my malaria pills down the toilet because I didn't like the taste (even after my parents mashed them up and tried to put them in chocolate ice cream). Or maybe it is...

1 comment:

Shirley Halladay said...

Be careful!!