Chagas
Ever had one of those days when if it's not one thing, it's ten others?
We have had some hard rain lately and if you live here, you know what that can bring... no electric, no Internet, no water, ...the list goes on. It's a great opportunity to work on "the coping skills". All in all, I fared well. I know some didn't. Someone told me almost 20 inches of rain fell in less than three days. Some strong winds, too. Spooky weather. 
Dr. House program was interesting this past Thursday. I had electric so I could watch it. I try not to miss it. It was about this man with Chagas disease. He had lived in Costa Rica a few months while doing missionary work many years earlier.
I had heard of this disease but never researched it. So, I googled Chagas. Surprise, surprise.
On Dr. House, the man unknowingly had been infected with Chagas disease for many years. Besides the condition that was killing him, one of this man's symptoms on Dr. House was he was "unusually nice". 
I wonder how many people in Costa Rica might have been bit by the Kissing bug ? Most are exceptionally nice people.
I know, it's only a t. v. show but have you ever heard of Chagas disease? It can go undetected for ten years or more. I learn stuff from Dr. House.
If it's not one thing, it's eleven others.
I wonder if the pills we all take for parasites work for Chagas, too?
5 comments:
HOW FUN, we just started watching that series, still catching up with season 3. I love this guy, wish I could act like him at work (problem is I can't until I am some sort of guru that can't be fired like House is ROFL)
The CR astronaut (Franklin Chang) did some experiments a while back in the Space Shuttle trying to find a cure for this
The first thing my vet told me the first time I saw him when I first got to CR was about the kissing bug and it's deadly disease. I didn't sleep for weeks, just stared at the ceiling waiting for it to come down and bit me on the lip. I kept looking at my kids' lips in the morning, looking for the tell-tale bump. But I finally had to stop worrying about it... you can't prevent it except by fumigating your house regularly and sleeping under a mosquito net. What a pain in the butt that is. If one bites you, you resort to taking some killer meds. WTF. We'll take all reasonable precautions and keep on truckin.
You know, you are many hundreds of times more likely to drown in your swimming pool than to be killed in a terrorist attack. You are 5000 times more like to die of food poisoning. The list goes on and on. Yet look at what the U.S. has done in the name of keeping any more of us from dying of a terrorist attack! You don't see them banning swimming pools.
We can't cover all the bases. We will miss the one that kills us, that's for sure.
Cheery tonight, eh?
It's always something living in the jungle. I really don't worry about it too much. Just stay alert.
We have that disease in Honduras, too. I first read about it in a newspaper article. I read somewhere else that if you wash the bite area thoroughly before you scratch, you are much less likely to get the disease, because the disease is actually caused by the feces that the insect drops near the bite area.
Even if true, I don't know how helpful that is because when I've been bitten by a mosquito or something while I'm sleeping, I find that I wake up AFTER I've already been scratching.
Like you and Sara, I can only worry about so many things -- and believe me, my list is long! I'm a real worrier. ;-) This one isn't on my list. I take some comfort in the fact that it is more common among those who have mud houses or dirt floors.
To look on the bright side, at least here in Central America we have a better chance of having any tropical problem diagnosed properly than we would if we were in the US.
You are so right. I won't tell you I found one of those bugs in my bedroom. It's on the second floor and I don't have mud floors!
I found it on my white curtains right after I wrote this article. No more bug posts!!
Out of mind, out of sight.
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