Sorry no more journal entries this last week.
A week ago Sunday, Steve was feeling 'pooped'.
Monday, he took off from work early to catch up on some rest as he thought he might have a flu.
By Monday evening, he was on the couch, sweating through his clothes, popping tylenol, with a fever of 104 (40 c). Yuck.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday... all seem like one long day. No energy, fever in the low 100s (never over 102 after Monday), splitting headache, aching joints, no appetite.
Finally on Friday we headed to the doctor for some testing. Sure enough, Steve's got dengue fever.(The CDC has a nice little writeup on Dengue here.) As of Friday: white blood cell count is 2,100 ("normal" is 5,000 to 10,000 said the doctor) and platelet count was 107,000 which is just a hint over the "go check into the hospital" level of 100,000 (and well below the "normal" level of 150,000 to 450,000 per mm). We got those results on Saturday, by the way, and the doctor strongly suggested a follow-up blood test. Of course, they couldn't do the tests on the weekend in Tamarindo and we decided that a 3 hour round trip to Santa Cruz on bumpy roads was going to be worse than not knowing the status of Steve's blood until Monday.
It has been an overwhelmingly unpleasant situation all the way around, but now on Day 8 there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. We've just gotten back from giving some more blood and are looking forward to new, higher numbers as early as this evening. Keep your fingers crossed.