Monday, July 02, 2007

Just What I Don't Need

When I planned to go home one sweaty night a month ago, I never planned for one this. Well, looking back now, there are many things which I failed to foresee and forget to put it on my plan, but then I can manage with them or without them. But the last thing that bothered me was to be used as a guinea pig!

A week at home at 1400+ metre above sea level, I was down with typhoid or they said so. Well, in this God forsaken village, the doctor is the pharmacist, and they said he is as good as a doctor but he is not a trained one so everywhere else, he will be called a quack!

The first two day, I was down with fever with high temperature. At high noon, I was shivering with cold even after covering myself with three blankets. I was given a combination of 'Combina Forte’ and 'Nimesulide + Paracetamol’ tablets. Later when I complained of my foot being ice-cold, the said I could be typhoid and my medication was changed accordingly. I was given tablets of 'Chloramphenico’' which I took thrice a day and after another two days, when my situation did not improve they changed my medicine to the more effective (that's what they said, not me) 'Ciprofloxacin - 500 m’.

That medicine seemed to work as on the first day itself it reduced my regular two-three fever a day to one. Another two more days and when my one fever a day did not decline further, my parents suggested that I could be contracting malaria!

The doubt, quickly agreed to by the quack resulted in the addition of another medicine! From the next morning when I took my medicine, apart from my usual dose for typhoid, I have to take two tablet of 'Quinine Sulphate’ thrice a day.

The medicine must be very strong as I hears insects and birds chirping in my ears for the whole day and have to live the life of a deaf for two days. When I complained of not hearing anything and the chirping insects, they all knowingly nodded their heads to suggest that the medicines worked as it should be!

Thanks to the quacks (including my parents) I was up and going after two weeks in bed. The moment I was up, I rushed around the house poking all over the dust-bins searching for the empty covers of the medicines that I was given so that I can wrote down the detailed combination that makes up the tablet so that I can possibly look for their potential side-effect on the net once I was back to Delhi.

And hopefully, I'll be back in a short while!!!

Tags: mizo, zomi, zogam

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