South Pacific : Feel the fever

Surviving Dengue Fever

This is the third installment of my South Pacific stories.

Part 1 Check out the story of the sinking boat here.

Part 2 Check out the story of nearly being swept out to sea.

Photo by Tevei Renvoyé on Unsplash

I woke in a panic. No one knew I was here. If anything happened to me, how would anyone find out?

After my time in Maupiti, I had returned to Huahine. I was feeling lost. I had never taken more than three weeks off since I started working at seventeen. Now I had left my job and was wandering through a part of the world that seemed incredibly exotic to me just a few months ago. I hadn’t worked in over two months.

The insecurity of realizing I didn't have a job, didn't have a reason to get up, was startling. If I died here, who would tell my family? Two months ago I had left a fast-paced job working in IT where every minute of my day was consumed with meetings and work. Now, if I didn't get up, no one would notice. I thought about what the step into retirement would mean, even though it was a distant idea. The uncomfortable truth was that without work, I had no idea who I was.

I was staying in a hostel on Huahine, a place with basic facilities. I had a bed in a dormitory with six beds. There was no one else staying there, or at least I hadn't seen anyone. Even the proprietor was absent. I had seen her briefly when I arrived, and she had shown me the bed and bathroom before disappearing.

I had been feeling unusually tired for a couple of days. At first, I thought it was just the long days spent under the hot tropical sun in French Polynesia. But as I lay there contemplating my purposelessness, the discomfort was becoming different, more intense.

My body felt like it had been run over by a truck. The fever was the first clear sign—my body temperature shot up, and my skin was hot to the touch. It was then that I noticed a rash creeping up my arms, a red, splotchy pattern spreading across my skin. I felt a sudden chill despite the heat around me, and a sense of dread washed over me. This wasn't just a bad cold; it was something worse.

I dragged myself to the local medical clinic—there was no hospital on the island. The nurse checked my temperature and examined my rash. Then she told me I had dengue fever. An outbreak had been spreading through the islands, and as soon as she mentioned it, I remembered the notices I had seen in Raiatea while waiting to hear about the boat.

Dengue fever is a viral illness spread by infected mosquitoes. The mosquitoes that carry dengue are active during the day and bite ferociously. I have always had bad reactions to insect bites. I had ignored the numerous welts I'd received since arriving in the islands. They swelled into red lumps that made me look like I had the pox.

The nurse explained that there was nothing she could do for me. I should be fine, she said, but I needed to stay hydrated, and if I started bleeding excessively, I should come back. Bleeding excessively! What the hell did that mean? I would find out.

As I trudged back to the hostel near the other end of town, I stopped at the store and bought two large gallon containers of water. I struggled under their weight, the plastic handles cutting into my hands as I plodded the rest of the way back. I felt like shit.

Back at the hostel, the symptoms intensified rapidly. Nausea rolled through me in waves, and the pain behind my eyes became unbearable. I struggled to even sit up, the sharp pain in my joints making every movement excruciating.

The distance from my family felt further now than ever before. Thousands of miles separated us, and in this moment of weakness, loneliness cut deeper than the physical pain. I wished for my mother's hand on my forehead, checking my temperature like she used to when I was a child. Even a familiar voice on the phone would have been comforting, but I couldn't muster the strength to make the journey to the phone box outside.

I forced myself to drink water constantly, knowing dehydration would only make things worse. My arms trembled as I brought the weight of the large plastic bottle to my cracked lips, sipping slowly to keep it down. Food was another challenge entirely. The small pack of crackers on my bedside table was all I could manage—bland enough that they might stay in my stomach, though the thought of eating made me grimace.

By the third day, my joints had swollen to the point where every movement brought tears to my eyes. I needed to use the bathroom, but the short distance across my small room suddenly seemed like miles. With a deep breath, I pushed myself up from the sweat-soaked sheets, my skin peeling away from the damp fabric.

The room spun violently as I stood. One step, then another. My knees buckled as a wave of nausea hit me without warning. I didn't make it to the bathroom. The pain triggered my gag reflex, and I doubled over, vomiting onto the floor. The smell made me heave again, adding to the mess. I leaned against the wall, tears streaming down my face, feeling utterly helpless and alone.

Cleaning up was torture. Each bend and stretch sent lightning bolts of pain through my inflamed joints. Using a towel to soak up the mess, I inched across the floor like an old man on all fours, pausing frequently as dizziness threatened to overwhelm me.

On the fourth day, I understood what the nurse meant about bleeding excessively. I woke with the pillow stuck to my face with blood from a nosebleed. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. When I spat into the sink, bright red blood swirled down the drain. My gums were bleeding freely, the blood seeping between my teeth no matter how gently I tried to rinse. I stared at my pale hollow-eyed reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink, blood on my lips. This was what dying alone looked like.

The panic was worse than the pain. If my body was breaking down, how would I even get help? I could barely walk to the bathroom, let alone make it back to the clinic. The nurse's warning echoed in my head, but "excessive bleeding" felt like an understatement when you're watching your own blood pool in a sink with no one around to care.

I sat on the edge of my bed, holding a towel to my mouth, and for the first time since getting sick, I genuinely wondered if I might not make it through this. Not from dengue itself, but from being so completely alone with it.

As the week progressed, small victories emerged. By the fifth day, I could make it to the toilet before the nausea overtook me. The fever began to break, coming in shorter waves rather than the constant inferno of the first few days. My sheets were still damp with sweat each morning. The bleeding from my gums had stopped, leaving only tender, swollen tissue as a reminder. My nosebleed had slowed to a trickle.

I began to believe I would survive this. The rash had started to fade, and though my body still ached, the pain had dulled from unbearable to merely miserable. With each small improvement, I felt a flutter of hope. I wasn't out of danger yet, but for the first time since falling ill, I could imagine feeling normal again.

Two weeks later, as I finally felt strength returning to my body, I walked out to the turquoise lagoon. After fleeing a sinking sailboat, nearly being swept away from Maupiti, and facing dengue fever alone, I had discovered something the busy IT professional back in Seattle never knew existed. I had found not just my capacity to survive, but my ability to be fully present with uncertainty. The fever had broken, but more than that, so had my old understanding of who I was without the anchor of constant work and purpose. I was ready to return to my boat Saoirse and the world I had left behind, with a better understanding of myself.