Pneumonia, Dengue and Typhoid

mira4bai4

A friend of mine that has been living here for over 10 years and been living in Delhi Pahar Ganj for 8, is due to come out of hospital after contracting Dengue Fever, added with Pneumonia and then yesterday I was told he also had had Typhoid.

Now lets be real here, this is a heavy load and he was so lucky, so lucky to have survived.

Most of us pay little attention to mosquito protection living here, this is the truth. I know that I do not. I know that I have been sick here for the past 4 months and my Leucocytes were really over active at 13,400.0 but no signs of why. My Vit B12 was subterranean at 153.90, gads the symptoms of B12 deficiency are a trip. I was so knackered.

I think that we think that we are super human WRONG.

I have said before, make sure that your immune system is in really good condition, work on it with quality foods and nutritional supplements before you get here and if you are going to be here for a while, pay attention to what you are doing, what you are living on and what you are living IN.

I found some months back that I could not eat spicy foods, so what I could eat was really reduced, this meant that my diet became limited and poor. There is really so much bad food here, nutritionally poor so when the choices become limited we have to do some serious boosting.

wonderwomanusa

Sorry to hear that you have been ill; hope you are trying to take better care of yourself. And I hope your friend is well on the road to recovery.

__________________
The map is not the territory. --Alfred Korzybski

carlaeb

Thanks for the reminder. I got three mosquito bites last night, and this morning I was thinking how I need to be more diligent about bug spray at sunset.

I hope your friend has a full recovery very soon.

Aishah

mira4bai4 - hope you get on the mend soon. Marmite is one of the best things for those B vitamins,(even if you don't like it! but it's available in Delhi - expensive but worth it) and the other thing is be sure your iron levels are up. You should take a haemoglobin test and get a reading here. But, disclaimer here, I am not a qualified health professional and nothing beats a good check up with someone who is. Did you have a check for malaria at the time? If lodged in the spleen can cause a huge drop in haemoglobin count. (I'm speaking from personal experience here - about 5 years back I had a 'bad run' - viral fever, malaria, then rheumatic fever consecutively over a period of around 4 months. The result was I became severely anaemic - and yes, good food and iron boosting with Vitamin B complex supplements were the key to good recovery.)
I do hope your friend is on the way to good health now too.
Re 'good food' - I find it is better to choose your own fruit and veggies, and make your own foods to suit you. Eating out is fine but not as a normal daily thing. However, you may be doing this already? Oily, heavily spiced food is very bad on the digestive system in the long run - gallstones, hiatus hernia, peptic ulcers etc. can all become problems, particularly with oily stuff.

__________________
"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."

Nick-H

Mira, I'm sorry to hear about your friend, and I hope they make a full recovery soon. I think I've heard that once one has had dengue, catching it again is very dangerous, potentially lethal.

Certainly the Dengue is a mossie-carried disease. I assume the pneumonia arose as a complication? Typhoid is water/food carried, I think, but if your friend caught this in the hospital then I guess that it can all be taken back to that one mosquito.

You are right about mosquito protection. We have nets on every window and screens on every door. Still a few get in and I get bitten most days. My wife asks why I don't use repellant and I guess I can't be bothered applying it every day, whereas for a 2-week holiday it was never far from my hand.

I have less sympathy on diet, or maybe it is that I have been through my fading-away-because-I-only-have-a-small-appetite-for-local-food phase, and come out the other side realising that I can eat what I want (as long as it can be bought; I do miss some of the root veg). I have a roast chicken, with no other spice other than garlic and imported paprika, most weeks, and chicken soup from that for a couple of other days in the week. My wife makes me mutton stew with little or no chilli --- and even the 'curries' that she makes for me are barely warm in the chilli sense. Good, fresh fish is easily available, and I have tiger prawns once a week that are sometimes as big as a small lobster.

Diet is entirely in our hands, and is, I think, equally important for comfort and feeling at home as it is for nutrition.

edwardseco

Typhoid, so easily avoidable and so truly nasty to get. Dengue the second time around is often very dangerous I hear.

Can't eat spicy food, sounds like esophogitis and that would mean a lifestyle change..

Nick-H

I'm not recommending it, but typhoid these days seems pretty curable; I do know someone who has had it recently, although I haven't seen her since just before she went down with it (I'm glad we didn't eat there that say!).

But on top of the other stuff. Sheesh. Poor guy.

Why not get cholera too: make a day of it!

mira4bai4

Hi guys, thanks for your thoughts, getting better, hard to find food that stimulates me to eat it at present and with the illness have not been a big eater so can't get into stuffing myself. but have to try harder. Taking more vitamins etc., let that slip for a while as I could not be bothered to open a bottle of them. Taking 1500 mcg to 3000 mcg of B12 daily at present Meganeuron OD Plus - Methycobalmin 1500 mcg, Pyridoxine hydrochloride I.P. 5.0 mg, Benfotiamine 50 mg, Folic Acid I.P. 5.0 mg, Alpha Lipoic Acid USPNF 200 mg, Biotin BP 5.0 mg in a slow release capsule. Plus a few other bits that I through in to mix n match. Leg cramps are a real issue at present, but have been for a while, better when the fan runs slow surprisingly and the soap in the bed trick, well don't know if it works.

My friend will be out of hospital by the weekend, he got Dengue about 10 years ago in South America, so yes he is one lucky yank. As for the Typhoid, he got that before going to hospital I understand.

On the return of one trip some 6 or so years back I feel over soon after arriving, fainted and all sorts, after blood tests it showed that there was remnants of Typhoid in my system but it had been dealt to by my body. I had only been in the Punjab.

As for mossie protect, zip, zero, sleep on the top (4th) floor, door and windows open, fan running and mostly starkers. All my wife and I do is apply stick type lip balm to the bites and the itch and any reminder goes away, try it you will be really impressed. If there is a mossi in the room I will give a spray under the bed with NOMOS a herbal mosquito repellent, actually Ayurvedic. This is a most excellent product and great on ants and all sorts. Basically Pyrethrum extract and Lemongrass.

My Haemoglobin count was 15.0, PVC 2.9, MCV 100.7, MCH 35.2, MCHC 35.0, RDW 13.7
No Dengue, no Malaria Antigen, no Typhi DOT, no Australia Antigen (accent is Aust tho' toxic, save the KIWI) and no Hepatitis of HIV. So no real reason for what i have been through.

Sama

sorry to hear about your friend and you, mira! I hope you (and he) get better soon....

what a combo of diseases, that would surely kill a weaker person. I was so sick with salmonella food poisoning during my last trip I could really see how salmonella can easily kill a child or a weaker senior citizen! and then if it was combined with something else....YIKES!

__________________
MY INDIA, 2005-2010
"Once you have felt the Indian dust, you will never be free of it." (Rumer Godden, 1975)

Nick-H

When I really lost my appetite, and couldn't eat the food in front of me because I felt full even before starting, the doc prescribed some stuff for acid stomach, and Betonin appetite stimulant. Did the trick: it was amazing to feel hunger again!

Aishah

That's really useful information, Nick. I have jotted it down. Our nephews' mother, has been suffering from anaemia, now improving - she is on iron supplements etc. but from time to time she has bouts where she will not eat which of course is not good for her. I remember when I was so ill I didn't want to eat - I could have done with that info. then! My GP here, didn't prescribe anything to increase appetite and I didn't know such a medicine existed. I improved very slowly, as iron levels started to increase.

mira4bai4

Nick, that Betonin sounds good to have on hand. Ant-acids and the like do not mix well when taking B12 but choosing your food carefully, trying more alkaline options and eating really slowly, no fizpop drinks and plenty of water does settle things somewhat. Figs I understand are really good to help reduce the acid. Tomato is tough on the body at times.
Something useful - Low-acid Fruits
Apricots, blueberries, huckleberries, strawberries, nectarines, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, mangos, elderberries, olives, figs, sweet apples, cherries, sweet peaches, sweet plums, persimmons, lemon.

The worst part is the square shaped air bubbles in the stomach, them sharp corners do hurt.

Sama, I think much of the time we are suffering from combo inflictions here, whether it is worms, parasites, amoebas, cysts, viruses, bacteria's, or dehydration; our body is in constant battle, constant survival mode.

B12 and anaemia go hand in hand, it makes me wonder how much testing goes on for B12 as I had to hassle to get the test done Rs 3,500 worth of tests. I cannot see that here in India veg and non veg people would have adequate B12 levels, so many suffer from anaemia. Even in the west when the diet is less than really full on healthy it must be low as well.

My friend Balu is hopeful getting out of hospital today, he sounds pretty bad still but will be interesting to see how more rugged he looks than usual.

Nick-H

Tut Tut, Mira...

Squares are two-dimensional only; you mean cubic air bubbles!

My two favourite straight-from-nature stomach settlers; bananas and honey. Discovered back in my sailing days.

mira4bai4

To true cubic or even the sea mines with their points and oh the relief when they ignite and resonate out wards.

Banana honey and dahi, but even the dahi can be acidic just like milk but has a soothing quality. Drinking probiotics, 2 or 3 helps heaps as well.

Aishah

Banana is great for lots of things - 'cubic' air bubbles? So that's what I had about 10 days ago! Most painful indeed!!
I didn't know re the honey though - useful stuff here.