Malaria and hospitals in general...

So my big news from Ghana is that I had malaria last weekend, which didn't turn out to be half as bad as I thought it was, and I felt 100% better less than a week after getting sick. No giving blood in my near future though.

So in my experience at least(there were four or five of us who got malaria in the last week and we all had slightly different experiences) having malaria means having a very high fever, feeling achey like when one has the flu, and having diarhea which dehydrates you and is generally all around unpleasant. I got sick Thursday evening, decided to stick the night out, went to the student clinic Friday morning where a doctor asked me a few questions and agreed with my self-diagnosis, went to the hospital for lab testing and received some really hardcore drugs. Naturally I slept most of the weekend, but even by Saturday I was feeling if still slightly week 90% better. And as far as being sick, or malaria goes, it was the perfect weekend to get it because I wasn't travelling and really hadn't planned anything too big, so I was close to treatment and wasn't disappointed to miss out on anything exciting. Overall, I was pretty impressed by my experience with Ghanaian healthcare for except for the waiting, there was a lot of waiting, it seemed pretty thorough...

This week I have taken it kind of slow just to be safe, but the big activity has involved hospitals once again. This time I wasn't sick though, but rather there was a compulsory medical exam for all international students to deem if we were fit to attend university(which led to a lot of speculation of what one would do if they weren't deemed fit seeing as classes are already half-way through, and also to a lot of speculation if one refused to go would they be deported...) Anyways, rather reluctantly I went, and spent a sum total of six hours at the hospital getting really very little done. The first day they give you and x-ray and lab testing, and then the next day you have to return to pick up your results and see a physician for a medical examination which consisted of I'm not really sure... blood pressure, pulse, an eye test and a periphery examination of my x-ray and lab results... To top it all off, it turns out I didn't even have to take the examination because I had a letter from my physician back home, but even though that was what we thought, we were initially told by the doctors at the hospital and our program head that it didn't matter... I found out that they figured it out too late, the letters did count... Ah well, I suppose it is a cultural experience of sorts in hospitals in general...

In other news, I get to go to a durbar in the eastern region this Saturday with my drumming class which should be a lot of fun and hopefully generate a more intersting blog post than this one. However, this one does sum up my life recently... malaria and hospitals in general:)