Fever stories

This household has gone through quite a bout of sickness over the last month.  I was down and out for over a week, Jon has been battling various viral ickiness, and Ildar has been hit with every nasty thing that floats around a Minnesota winter.  The other night at dinner Ildar was not feeling so hot.  Well, actually he was too hot and that was the problem.  He asked me how long my illness lasted and I refused to tell him, but did say that once I felt a little better I was amazed at how great a little better felt.  He was having none of that.  So we started to tell him tales of past illnesses to try to put the current health picture in better light.  I think the story that tops all the rest is our dengue fever tale from our Peace Corps days in the Eastern Carribean.  Or the Antilles.  I alwas thought that sounded a little more exotic.  Whatever you call it, it was a malaria free zone, but did have a different, less severe, mosquito born illness that was to be dreaded.  Dengue.  There are two kinds.  The first and less serious knocks you out for a month or so, but then is gone and you supposedly suffer no long term health effects, although I have my doubts.  The second is called Hemorragic Dengue Fever or something like that and it can kill you.  By causing your organs to fail one after the other.  From my understanding, both exist down in the carribean, but the first is more common. 
Jon and I both ran into mosquitoes who introduced us to the first variety.  And it was awful.  I went down first, with a serious fever and these body aches that made all of your joints hurt horribly.  Especially your eyes.  Now, you may not have known your eyes were joints, and I don't know if they technically qualify, but they do move and every movement you made with them during the dengue caused you to want to cry.  So no quick looks to the left or right.  I mean even the little movement it takes to read a page of a novel could move me to tears.  So a person in the throes of Dengue can't do much but lay still and stare straight ahead.  Under a mosquito net- because you get paranoid as well and I got real nervous everytime I heard the dreaded buzzing.  Once Jon joined me in fever hell, things got interesting.  We were both kind of halluncinating (how do you kind of hallucinate?  I'm not sure, but to this day I am hoping that those cockroaches I saw in our kitchen during one fever-y night were a hallucination, not the real thing.  I mean, I know that we had a cockroach problem in that house, but I mean, that night there were millions) and generally not doing more than sitting and staring in front of us.  Luckily a friend took pity and would stop by daily to cook us a little something and do some dishes.  Until he was hit by dengue as well.
After a couple weeks, I started to feel better and one day I went back to work.  Only, after being there for a couple hours I broke out in this horrid rash on my hands and feet.  At first I tried to grin and bear it, but soon it was driving me nuts.  I mentioned it to a co-worker and she said, "Ahhhh, stage two of the dengue."  Stage two?  She suggested I head right home and said to take showers whenever the water was running, otherwise to keep buckets of water around and soak my hands and feet in those whenever possible.  So I did.  Shower a lot.  I was showering through about day three of manic itchiness while Jon was still laying listlessly and staring ahead, trying not to move his eyes when I spotted a gigantic spider.  Gigantic.  Right above me on the ceiling of the shower.  I mean, we had seen some spiders during our stay, but this thing was nuts.  Or, I was still halucinating.  But sure enough, after I screamed and Jon ran in (looking straight ahead) he saw it too!  So it was real.  Jon went for a broom and started swiping at it, but to our horror we found out it could jump.  Far.  And towards me in the shower.  It was an awful 2-5 minutes after that as we screamed and batted at the spider, me naked and itching, Jon trying not to move his eyes, and the spider making heruclean jumps around our apartment.  I don't really remember how it ended, but I think we were not victorious.  I think it crawled into some dark corner and caused us more paranoia until we moved out of that place.
It was soon after that when my itching started to diminish and Jon's began.  The dengue was sweeping through the Peace Corps volunteers by this time and I found that no one had any pity for your rash stories until they hit that stage.  Whenever anyone entered stage two, word would spread.  Richard's got the rash....Beth started itching last night....Joyce can't stop scratching... calls would come in from around the island at all hours of the day or night.  Because once they had it, they wanted sympathy and remedies and promises that it would end.  And it did.  But it is not forgotten.

I think our tale roused Ildar out of his stupor for a little while- we even got a few chuckles as he imagined us cowering and swatting at the giant jumping spider.  And the next morning he woke up feeling just a little better, and you know what?  He was amazed at how much just a little better can feel.