What Does Malaria Feel Like?

I get this question whenever people find out that I've caught malaria. Although I can't say I fully trust my recollection, here goes....

I was living in Uganda teaching Sexual Reproductive Health to children. We had a term break coming up, and I took the opportunity to fly to Dubai, UAE, where my aunt and her family were living. This was early May, right around my birthday.

Looking back through my journal, something had been wrong for about a month. I can only describe it like this: have you ever slept in a strange bed, and it wasn't working for you? You couldn't sleep soundly, your back was stiff for awhile the next day, you were a bit irritable...stuff like that is how I had been feeling. My bed at the time was a four inch mattress stretched over a broken spring frame, so I made the natural assumption: my bed was fucking up my back. Case closed.

Fast forward a month and I'm in Dubai. IT IS HOT. Not, "Man! What a hot day!" hot, but "If you are outside for longer than twenty minutes you risk permanent damage" hot. 50 Celcius, 90% humidity. As we drove in from the airport I scoffed at the air-conditioned bus stops. "Seriously - have we reached a point where we can't stand outside for five minutes?" I asked my aunt. Obvious foreshadowing.

About ten days into my vacation my aunt was kind enough to drop me off at a mall, since I hadn't been inside an actual store in months. She told me to call her when I wanted to come home. I shopped, decided to go to another mall, THEN decided to walk because it was two blocks away and I'm not a pussy. Worst mistake ever. It shocked me how quickly I faded. I had to stop in every single open shop as well as every single bus shelter. Once I finally got to the next mall (I have no clear memory of this) I made my way to the public washrooms and happily LAID ON THE FLOOR BECAUSE IT WAS COOL AND NOT MOVING. I eventually got it together enough to phone my aunt. She arrived and, mercifully, by this time I was feeling better. I told one of my cousins that if the feeling went away by the next day, it was heat stroke. If it stayed, it was malaria.

The next day, all was well. Heat stroke be damned! I had an idea then: I would stop taking asprin and tylenol and see if that made this achy feeling go away. Maybe the pills were making things worse.

The following morning the contents of my aunt's house were scheduled to be packed away and put into a C-can to be shipped back to Canada; she and her family were moving back home soon. I agreed to oversee the movers, since both my aunt and my uncle were at work. The movers came and I played the game of "stay out of the way but supervise." Eventually the dog and I wound up on a LazyBoy chair in the corner. If I thought I faded fast during my 50-degree walk, I had no idea what was coming next. Within the space of an hour I went from feeling okay to sitting on the concrete steps outside, in the direct sun, wrapped in a wool blanked with my bare feet on the ground so that I could absorb the heat. I was shaking so badly I could hardly speak and it hurt to even have my t-shirt touch my skin.

My aunt left work, picked me up, and drove me straight to the American Hospital of Dubai. What does full-blown malaria feel like? Here's my best description:
1. For the ladies: it is like being pregnant. You may never have been pregnant before, but when it happens your gut tells you: this is exactly what it feel like. Same with malaria. Your gut says: Yup, here we go.
2. It affects your central nervous system, which most people don't discuss. In addition to being extremely sensitive to touch, you also become extremely sensitive to sound and irrational. My aunt's cell phone rang several times, and it was all I could do not to rip it from the car and throw it on the road. Also, even the slightest bumps - and Dubai has great roads - are unbearable.
3. You swing from being freezing cold to unbearable hot. Although I only have a clear memory of the cold.
4. The halmark of the disease: your back, from tip of tailbone to base of skull, hurts unbelievable. Your neck stiffens and your natural reaction is to curl up. Not pleasant.

My recommendation is that you avoid malaria if you can. Unfortunately for me, I have an intolerance for malaria pills (found THAT out the hard way), so when I'm exposed there is little I can do to minimize my risk. You, on the other hand, should remember to take your pills.