Our new bedroom look...

I don't think even when I was a little girl and maybe dreamt of sleeping in a princess type canopy bed did I ever think I would be sleeping under a mosquito net. Ok, maybe that isn't the same- but the look is somewhat similar.

So, malaria. Yeah. It's a pretty big deal here. And we have to be really careful. Hence the mosquito net around the bed.

We had a two hour presentation/Q&A session the other day about all of the risks and the ABCD (Awareness, Bite-prevention, Chemo-prophylaxis and early Detection) of malaria. It's not looking too good for me. The thing is the doctor made it sound like a pretty darn good idea to take the pills right now from the get-go...we were told about 3 pills that are available- here the thing...

Pill A is an antibiotic. Straight up. ***Warning, TMI coming up!*** Even when I have to take an antibiotic for 10 days for an ear infection or something I end up with ridiculous diarrhea and raging yeast infections (common symptoms to be sure, but I get em BAD). That is only from 10 days of antibiotics. Can you imagine what I'd be like on permanent ones? **shudder**

Pill B is a once weekly (the other two are daily pills) which sounds nice- but, it has three known symptoms- headaches, nausea/vomiting and psychotic dreams! Um yeah. Again I will say that I have enough issues with my stomach, etc to not want to take anything that might have the side-effect of extra nausea or vomiting- and although Joel thought the idea of psychotic dreams was interesting, I'm not really down with that either. I dream pretty vividly anyway- Joel knows that if I have a nightmare he ends up awake longer than me afterwards, so, it's probably just not a very good idea.

Pill C doesn't seem to have any side-effects. But it is a daily pill, is hard to get, and costs $5 a pill!

So... given all that... I'm kind of leaning towards really, really focusing on the A, the B and the D in order to prevent the C. Joel seems to be on board and we're working on making our home into a fortress against mozzies.

Did you know that mozzies kind of freeze if it's too cold? They don't die, but they just can't move. Maybe eventually they die. But anyway, another of the preventative measures that the doctor who presented to us advised was to use the air con in the bedroom and have the temp between 18 and 22 degrees- temps at which, the mosquitoes will freeze (and therefore not be able to bite you!). So, lucky me, I get to have the bedroom at a comfortable (for me) sleeping temperature, and Joel, well, I guess he might have to wear more clothes to bed from now on (because he likes it much, much warmer than me) but hopefully, any bug that does get in there will just be frozen into place.

That said, I've woken up with some kind of bites on me every morning. They don't really seem like mosquito bites though; they're not itchy. Maybe I have spiders biting me... goodness knows that are enough of them around to be doing it all night!

Well, anyway, so that is the latest- protecting ourselves from malaria (in Latvia it was the ticks, every place seems to have it's deadly insect)... just another day in Angola...