I've posted about this before, but the sickest I ever was happened when I came down with malaria. I had been teaching in Uganda and during a two week vacation to Dubai to see my family the malaria presented. The doctors insisted on admitting me; I phoned my doctor in Uganda and she said the malaria was easily treated with oral antibiotic. Not wanting to spend several days in the hospital, and by that time malaria was kind of blase to me anyway (roughly half of our volunteer group eventually came down with it. In Africa, any time you are sick it's "malaria"), I left the hospital with the pills and headed back to my aunt's. I was only sick with the malaria itself for maybe 2 or 3 hours. It was, to say the very least, unpleasant. It affects your nervous system as much as anything else, so in addition to extreme fever and chills (wrapped in a wool blanket, sitting outside in the direct sun with my bare feet on the concrete so I could fully absorb the heat. It was 47*C that day.), vomiting and pain you also become very sensitive to sounds and sensations. The mild bumps on the road were excruciating, and my aunt's phone ringing was almost more than I could tolerate. The hallmark of the disease, though, is pain in the back. My entire back from base of skull to tip of tailbone felt as though it was made of glass. A deep ache that was very painful. Once I got some pain meds into me at the hospital, though, I was fine. My problem was not the malaria - as I said, that's easily treated. Unfortunately what no one knew is that I am extremely intolerant to virtually all malarial treatments. I should have suspected that because I couldn't take daily anti-malaria pills in Africa without throwing up. Once my system was full of chloroquinine and doxycycline, the party really started. I went deaf in about 30 minutes. The tinnitus was so bad I couldn't distinguish anything being said to me. My liver started to fail; the renal specialist classified the damage as "moderate," and it was severe enough that they had to stop any and all medication for 2 days (so the malaria came back). I vomited uncontrollably, then when I was done vomiting I got stuck in a dry-heave cycle that was so bad I burst all the blood vessels in my eyes. I distinctly remember turning to my aunt and asking her to get them to make it stop. She left, came back with a nurse and the nurse explained that of the two IVs I had (one in each arm) one was strictly and anti-nausea drip; it was set to maximum, and nothing else could be done. Lastly, I lost all sense of taste and smell. It took almost two months for them to fully return. I was sick enough that both parents flew out from Canada, and I had to cut my volunteering stint down from eight months to six, because the doctor thought I shouldn't be exposed to it again if there weren't good hospitals around. I wish with all my heart that we had the kind of hospitals in Canada that they do in Dubai. I have no doubt that, had I been in a Canadian critical intensive care unit, I would have died.
Wait, are you serious? According to google, a gallon is just under 4 liters of water a day. Something any healthy adult should be doing. Hell, I was drinking 3 gallons of water a day in preparation for cutting weight. Is it more than most people drink? Sadly, yes. Is it 'ridiculous'? It shouldn't be.
I don't want to come in and fuck up a thread with facts and stuff, but the idea that any healthy adult should be drinking 4 litres of water a day is fucking ludicrous. Remember that whole fad about "8 glasses of water per day"? Yeah, there was never even a shred of evidence suggesting that this should be done. Just one of those echo-chamber type things that got carried away with itself. And it's been known to happen that drinking that much water per day can wash out the osmotic gradient in your kidneys. Also; in the first place, if you had been in Canada you wouldn't have had malaria. Presumably the hospitals in Dubai are more experienced with malaria than in Canada because unless you're working with a special patient population here, you can practice for 30 years and never see a single case of it. Secondly, malaria survival rates, whether in the first or third world, converge on the same level the longer you wait between getting malaria and going to the hospital.
Do what works best for your body. Regardless of whatever medical literature says, if large amounts of water keep the problem at bay, then so be it. Fuck what anyone else thinks. No, actually, Dubai doesn't see malaria any more than a Canadian hospital would. I was fortunate that there was a tropical disease specialist on call, because - as she put it - not many doctors would have known that the medication I was eventually treated with could be used against malaria. As I said explicitly in my first post - the life-threatening part of the illness wasn't malaria; it was a reaction to the drugs. They initially treated me with the most common ones, as any doctor would, and they failed. I have no faith in that the Canadian medical profession would have thought outside the box like my doctor did. I got the malaria in Uganda, not the UAE. I could just as easily have flown home with it and presented in Ontario or (god forbid), Manitoba.
Learn to read. "Any healthy person" almost by definition excludes someone who is extremely and abnormally prone to kidney stones and has to take lots of water just to avoid them. I don't know what you were getting at here but this is a silly point to make. So your argument goes from "I really wish with all my heart that we had those hospitals in Canada" to "I really wish with all my heart that everyone in the world could be as lucky as I was." Well, at least as lucky as one can be to be so intolerant to malaria prophylaxis meds so as to not take them, to get malaria, and then afterwards to get every toxic side effects from the anti-malarials when they try to treat the malaria. I don't know what happened or how out of the box it was, but you can consider my credulity strained that no infectious diseases expert in Canada would have been able to keep you from dying. I even read a few case reports about malarial death in Canada; they were mostly due to late recognition of the disease and drug-resistant parasites. By the way, I decided to look up annual cases of malaria per year between the countries just for fun. The UAE was an endemic malarial zone until the late 1990's, and there was an average of 1,600 cases per year between 02 and 05; the number was north of 20,000 per year in the late 70's and went down to 3500 by 1990 ( <a class="postlink" href="http://www.emro.who.int/rbm/CountryProfiles-uae.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.emro.who.int/rbm/CountryProfiles-uae.htm</a> ). In Canada, see this: So, yeah, they do see malaria more often, and their population is less than a third of Canada's.
Why are you always such an argumentative shithead? The 'silly point' I was making is that two consecutive posts implied that TX was stupid for drinking so much water and cited alternatively that 'everyone' should drink that much or that 'there is no proof that drinking so much does anything.' It doesn't matter what any publication or study says...ultimately, if it works for her then everyone should just be quiet. If you agree with me and think that she is excluded from your statement, then why did you make it in the first place? And presumably she is a 'healthy adult'; she just has a predisposition to kidney stones. It would be great if you didn't try to speak for me, thanks. No, I really wish that the hospital that I went to in Dubai could be cloned and scattered throughout this country. Like Samr, I'm pretty skeptical of medical care, particularly in this country. Within the last three years, in Canada, the following has occurred for me and my family: - my cousin presented with Addison's disease in Kingston, Ontario. No one knew that she had it, she was in the middle of an Addisonian crisis. She died. In the ensuing legal investigation, the doctor on call was found to be 100% at fault, by his own admission. The negligence was so bad that during mediation the doctor's own lawyer excused himself from the proceedings and asked to be removed from the case; he felt he could not ethically represent someone whom he felt was so completely at fault. - I had bronchitis for 3 months last year. Hard core, cough-till-you-puke twice a day bronchits. Nine visits to hospitals or clinics produced nothing. One doctor suggested fresh-squeezed orange juice, another suggested antibotics, another refused to renew the antibotics, etc. It eventually went away on its own. - I currently have some type of cyst that keeps rupturing. I've been told that it is elective to have it treated, given that when it isn't presenting I'm asymptomatic. This isn't on my arm - it's internal, painful, and the ER doctors who see me suggest surgery right away. The specialists shrug their shoulders and say 'make an appointment.' Please forgive me if I've completely lost faith in the doctors in this country. I think the system is so broken that no one can function well within it, and any doctor worth his salt likely moves someplace where s/he can make money and have some control. I was flippant when I said that the cases UAE sees is equal to that of Canada, and for that I apologize. I stand by my belief that malaria in the Middle East has been greatly reduced and is now somewhat uncommon, particularly when compared to sub-Saharan Africa. I was just as much a medical oddity walking in to the American Hospital of Dubai with malaria as I would have been walking into St. Joe's in Sarnia, Ontario.
Let's see. I'm 20. Sprained my ankles 6 times, been hospitalized for a stomach virus in high school (throwing up bile sucks), should have been hospitalized for norovirus freshman year of college (campus clinic sucks), should have been hospitalized for swine flu sophomore year (see above), and currently I am in Bumfuck Egypt with a piece of my knee floating in the Red Sea and coral stingers lining my ribcage. I am wrapped up in medical gauze all around my stomach like Bruce Lee. This thread was made for me. Just to butt in on the water debate: depending on where you live, 4 liters of water a day can easily be "just getting by". I went sightseeing in Delhi and Jaipur this summer on the hottest day of the year, and ended up drinking about three 2-liter bottles of water a day just to replace my bodily fluids (and food replaced the salts).
Anti-Focus: I spent last summer in Morocco, where I was warned against drinking local water. I was even warned against eating food that might have made contact with local water sources, e.g. ice cream. The first few days I was cautious and drank bottled water, then I decided "Fuck it, I didn't come to this country to be scared of every little thing that might hurt me." So from then on, I drank water without consideration to its source—probably, this was a stupid decision. During my time there, I met a lot of other travelers who became viciously sick, having come down with either a disease, virus, or parasite. Getting sick within the first few weeks seemed to be a part of getting indoctrinated in the country. (I met quite a few people who had to be hospitalized, even.) Meanwhile, I never felt better, and as weeks passed I became more comfortable with drinking water from questionable sources. Soon I was drinking water that Moroccans warned me generally made travelers sick; on at least one occasion I drank from water sources that Moroccans themselves decided against drinking. Never ended up getting sick at all, which I thought was hilarious given how sick everyone else seemed to get from much milder conditions. My immune system is invincible.
I was recently diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. It's really not that rare, but I don't know if many people even know they have it. I score an 8/9 on the Beighton score. Basically, I'm extremely flexible. Yes, this is an advantage in bed. I'm 24 years old and I can still do the splits without any pain. My shoulders constantly pop out of the sockets, as do my thighs. However, I am starting to have some joint pain, especially in my knees. I recently tore my meniscus in my left knee by simply turning wrong. All of my joints lack adequate collagen meaning they are very loose. When I get cuts or tears in my skin, it takes a lot longer to heal. When I go to have children I'll likely go into preterm labor - my sister's three children were all born before 34 weeks (it's genetic, she has it too). Luckily, I don't have heart involvement - lots of people do, and die early because of heart failure. But, hey, at least I can put my ankles behind my ears...
I get violently ill once a year. Flu, cold, mono. Check, check, check. Other than that, I'm pretty lucky, as I don't get sick other than that one time a year, however, I am the biggest pussy on the planet. For instance: I stubbed my toe, hard. I basically freaked out and said to my wife 'holy shit, maybe I need to go to the doctor.' She says: 'they'll just wrap it up, I can do that.' My response: 'BUT WHAT ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF GANGRENE?!?!?!' Over-react much? Check. I came home from the gym and said to my wife 'fuck, I think I have a hernia. Or maybe it's gas. I'm not sure.' I had a zit on the back of my leg. I asked my wife to 'take care of it.' After stabbing it, I scream like a bitch and say 'AM I GOING TO BLEED TO DEATH?' Yeah, it's a good thing I don't have any major medical issues. Jesus, I'm a pussy.