Wow I just realized I haven’t updated my blog in 5 days. I’m sorry guys. I have a bit of blogger’s guilt now.. you know… knowing that you guys keep coming back to my blog for an update but only get disappointed to see none. So I decided to quickly draft out an entry here. Let me tell you why I’ve been out of action.
On Friday I developed a bit of a cough. It was the kind of cough that preludes some illness although it didn’t show any serious signs yet. Whenever I coughed out phlegm it would be transparent and it was mostly a dry cough. I went about my day as normal and planned so many things over the weekend.
Mainly I planned a long 87K cycling ride on Saturday morning then off to Penang on an afternoon flight and another ride again on Sunday. All that changed on Friday night.
A fever started to kick in so I took a couple of panadols and it was during the middle of the night my fever really started to kick in. I was shivering in the cold air-conditioned room and I forced myself over to go through the shivers and take another dose of panadol. After a while the shivering stopped and I could go back to sleep.
Then came Saturday morning, the start of the day that was going to be the most suffering for me in a long while. In the morning my fever clocked 38.8 degrees celcius and so I went to see a doctor. The doctor diagnosed a viral and bacterial infection and so he gave me some meds and even said if I’m feeling well enough I could make my afternoon flight to Penang if I really wanted to.
I didn’t. I ended up sleeping the entire day right after the clinic, only waking up to have something to eat. My fever then had clocked 39.2 and Shorty was concerned because my fever kept getting higher and higher and the panadol didn’t seem to have any effect. By evening she decided to send me to the hospital for a dengue test.
I waited 45 minutes in the Accident & Emergency room the whole time feeling a little cold because of my fever. When I finally got to see the doctor, the doctor told me that it’s too early for him to test if I really have dengue or not but if I wanted I could take the test anyway. Shorty decided I should do it anyway and since I was already there I okayed it.
I hate needles and drawing blood but some nurses have got a really good skill for things like that. They know how to make it as quick and as painless as possible. This nurse wasn’t one such nurse. She took a very long time trying to pull blood and she said I didn’t have enough blood and I could tell because she started pushing the needle deeper which hurt.
When she finally pulled out the needle I thought it was all over but she said she didn’t manage to get enough. She consulted the more senior nurse and they concluded that they needed to poke my other arm and try to draw blood from there. I was pretty pissed off but I guess they could tell because they were apologizing profusely.
After it was all done, we were told we needed to wait for 2 hours for the results. I couldn’t stay there any longer because I was feeling really weak and tired so I decided to head home first and told them to call me when they got the result. Within an hour they gave me a call and told me that they needed me back at the hospital to take a 3rd sample because one of the earlier samples was faulty. I got super mad and I decided I wasn’t strong enough to get out of bed and go to the hospital again to take another test. So I decided that if the fever didn’t come down by the next morning I would go for the test.
Saturday night was bad for me. By 2AM my fever had reached a temperature of 39.5 degrees celsius, a new peak. Nothing I did seemed to be able to bring my fever down. The panadols had no effect and the sponging hadn’t brought it down either. Fortunately my brother came to check on me around that time and I told him I was really worried about this fever. So the only thing we could do was for him to sponge me. He did so for about half an hour and managed to bring the fever down from 39.5 to 39.0. A number that was still high but a number that I was more comfortable with.
I went back to sleep after that and I woke up a few times before morning came. Subconsciously though I began to feel better. I began to feel less cold and Shorty who came to check on me told me that she could see I was sweating. So my body was getting back to normal.
I woke up the next morning with my fever almost gone. In the 37.5 degrees level. I felt a little bit more strength in me but I had new symptoms. Diarrhea and I still had my cough. So I ended up sleeping the entire day today until now.
So that’s why I’ve been out of action these few days guys. Sorry I’ve been away. Gonna take a rest now. Will update again as soon as I get well.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space