Yesterday one of the kiddos (5 year old) that I live with started to complain of a stomach ache while we were in town. In order to get to town we go over this ridiculously long, bumpy road, so his mom thought it was just some carsickness. However, a couple hours later, he felt pretty febrile. Of course I went into medical mode and came home and brushed up on malaria. I have a book in which I rated his symptoms and if he got a score of 7 or more, he most likely had malaria. This little guy rang in at a six. After we got home he took some ibuprofen and with about 30 minutes was laughing, playing and seemed almost back to his old self. If he would have come into my office I probably would have diagnosed him as a viral gastroenteritis and instructed mom to treat his symptoms. Well, his fever kept coming and going and this morning he was 104.1....and he just looked sick! His mom gave him a malaria test which was +++.
This kiddo is the first one of our team to get malaria. They went 13 months without getting it so....I'd say that's pretty good!
So now I'm back to reading up on malaria, looking at what I should expect, etc. I was just struck today at how my list of differentials has expanded and I have to learn a whole new set of potential problems. It's a sometimes world.........
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I don't think anyone else even understands the title of your blog. I do. I laughed. :0)
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