Dec
26
Back from my bout with Dengue…
Oh the damage one little mosquito can do…
It has been a few weeks since I updated the blog, with good reason. I was very sick. I had dengue a mosquito borne illness. Think malaria’s evil sister, it was awful. I had a fever of 102-105 for about a week. The first few days I was in excruciating pain, worse than you can possible imagine. Every part of my body ached. The worse part had to be my kidneys, they felt like I had been kicked repeatedly.
There is no preventative for it, and minimal treatment. It is a hemorrhagic fever, so internal bleeding is a strong possibility, thankfully my case wasn’t that severe.
So after a home visit to get injections for the pain and fever, I went to the hospital and got an IV and some more injections, fun times. They did blood work and confirmed it was indeed dengue. I was pretty dehydrated and lost about 15 pounds. It took me about a week and a half to get over it. My wife tells me I need to take it easy and be careful with staying out of the rain, so I am listening. I added some info from wikipedia.com to give a little more background on dengue.
Here is a description from wikipedia:
Signs and symptoms
The disease manifests as a sudden onset of severe headache, muscle and joint pains (myalgias and arthralgias—severe pain that gives it the nick-name break-bone fever or bonecrusher disease), fever, and rash. The dengue rash is characteristically bright red petechiae and usually appears first on the lower limbs and the chest; in some patients, it spreads to cover most of the body. There may also be gastritis with some combination of associated abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. Some cases develop much milder symptoms which can be misdiagnosed as influenza or other viral infection when no rash is present. Thus travelers from tropical areas may pass on dengue in their home countries inadvertently, having not been properly diagnosed at the height of their illness. Patients with dengue can pass on the infection only through mosquitoes or blood products and only while they are still febrile. The classic dengue fever lasts about two to seven days, with a smaller peak of fever at the trailing end of the disease (the so-called biphasic pattern). Clinically, the platelet count will drop until the patient’s temperature is normal. Cases of DHF also show higher fever, variable hemorrhagic phenomena, thrombocytopenia, and hemoconcentration. A small proportion of cases lead to dengue shock syndrome (DSS) which has a high mortality rate. DHF combined with a cirrhotic liver has been suspected in rapid development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Given that the Dengue virus (DEN) is related to the Hepatitis C virus, this is an avenue for further research as HCC is among the top five cancerous causes of death outside Europe and North America. Normally HCC does not occur in a cirrhotic liver for ten or more years after the cessation of the poisoning agent. DHF patients can develop HCC within one year of cessation of poisoning agent.
Diagnosis
The diagnosis of dengue is usually made clinically. The classic picture is high fever with no localising source of infection, a petechial rash with thrombocytopenia and relative leukopenia – low platelet and white blood cell count. Care has to be taken as diagnosis of DHF can mask end stage liver disease and vice versa.
- Fever, bladder problem, constant headaches, eye pain, severe dizziness and loss of appetite.
- Hemorrhagic tendency (positive tourniquet test, spontaneous bruising, bleeding from mucosa, gingiva, injection sites, etc.; vomiting blood, or bloody diarrhea)
- Thrombocytopenia (<100,000 platelets per mm³ or estimated as less than 3 platelets per high power field)
- Evidence of plasma leakage (hematocrit more than 20% higher than expected, or drop in hematocrit of 20% or more from baseline following IV fluid, pleural effusion, ascites, hypoproteinemia)
- Encephalitic occurrences.
Dengue shock syndrome is defined as dengue hemorrhagic fever plus:
- Weak rapid pulse,
- Narrow pulse pressure (less than 20 mm Hg)
- Cold, clammy skin and restlessness.
Dependable, immediate diagnosis of dengue can be performed in rural areas by the use of Rapid Diagnostic Test kits, which also differentiate between primary and secondary dengue infections. Serology and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) studies are available to confirm the diagnosis of dengue if clinically indicated. Dengue can be a life threatening fever.eme kanan
Cause
Dengue fever is caused by Dengue virus (DENV), a mosquito-borne flavivirus. DENV is an ssRNA positive-strand virus of the family Flaviviridae; genus Flavivirus. There are four serotypes of DENV. The virus has a genome of about 11000 bases that codes for three structural proteins, C, prM, E; seven nonstructural proteins, NS1, NS2a, NS2b, NS3, NS4a, NS4b, NS5; and short non-coding regions on both the 5′ and 3′ ends.
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