I thought everything was going to be easy when I returned home...

.....apparently not! The first day home was great- Tropical Storm Fay was hanging out overhead, school was canceled for Kristina and Mom and Dad got to stay home from work. It was a nice party in the dark (our power went out for a while too). Wednesday is when things got dicey.

Wednesday morning, Dad and I left the house early to run some errands as I was supposed to leave for school on Thursday. We went to the bank and the car dealership and decided to go to Perkins for breakfast. Now, I hadn't slept too much in the past few days (jet lag and excitement) nor had I been able to keep much food down. Well breakfast comes and I can only eat two bites of it before I feel incredibly sick. I think I am just having a difficult time adjusting to the food as the food that I was eating in Africa was rather bland. I became extremely cold as we were leaving Perkins (I felt like I was living in a freezer) and I began to feel dizzy and have numbness in my hands and feet and heart palpitations (it felt like my heart was made up of butterflies). Now, I'm not a trained doctor but I have enough sense to know that this is not a good combination. Dad takes me to the urgent care for a blood test as I am sure I have malaria. Well, I end up almost passing out twice (I literally slid down the wall in a haze) and spent the next few hours hooked up to an IV, giving blood for testing and answering many many questions. After a while (and two specialist consults later), the urgent care doctor decided it was best for me to go to the emergency room to see if they could figure it out and so that they could do the malaria test (urgent care doesn't have people who know how to read a malaria smear). Mom joins dad and I and after Mom informs the triage nurse that I have an extremely high white blood cell count and that my EKG was abnormal, I was brought back to a room that they opened just for me. I was hooked up to another IV, had more blood taken from me and had a chest x-ray. The chest x-ray showed that I have pneumonia (which is really strange since I don't have any symptoms). The blood smears and cultures had to be sent to the lab in Ft. Myers and so we wouldn't hear about those until the next day. But, seeing as I still did have pneumonia, the ER doctor ordered IV Levequin and was set to discharge me after the Levequin was finished running in. As Mom and I were walking out of the ER (by this point Dad had left to be with Kristina), all of the sudden my heart felt like it was stopping (I though I was dying, no joke), my legs went numb and my hearing disappeared. I fell to the flood, a wheelchair was brought for me and I was wheeled back into the room I had occupied before. When the ER doctor came in and saw my gray appearance and heard what had happened, he admitted me for more testing. Once admitted, I had my vitals taken every hour, blood taken quite a few times, and had a cardiac echo, among other things.

I'm now home and though very tired, I feel generally fine (though I felt "generally fine" before all of this happened.) We found out that the malaria smear was negative though Mom talked to the doctor that read the smear today and he said that you really need three smears done to make sure that you don't have malaria. And the cardiologist said the echo looked fine. So basically, I know nothing more now than I did before. Oh well!

I was supposed to drive up to school on Thursday but that has been postponed until Sunday though even that is not a guarantee as I might fly to school and come back for my car later. But I have to be at school by Tuesday for enrollment clearance so I will be back to Memphis soon.

Also, below are a few pictures from my trip. I have just uploaded a bunch to the flickr site (the kids, safari and Zanzibar) so make sure you go check those out! http://www.flickr.com/photos/24414765@N07/

Namaste!