Dengue Fever in Atenas

The rainy season seems to have brought a very unwanted visitor to our little town of Atenas. There is apparently a fairly serious outbreak of Dengue Fever here. This a tropical mosquito-borne disease (like malaria) and can be life-threatening. The symptoms include sudden onset fever and severe muscle and joint pain that gives it the nickname “break-bone fever”, or “bone-crusher disease”… Yikes!

So, when Nathan started getting sick and vomiting the other day, we were quite concerned. I took him to the clinic where there was a large line-up. We were really fortunate to meet up with Gretel who helped us through everything. She is a nurse at the clinic, but she also does extra work at our little resort of Poco Cielo, so we know her quite well.

She asked if I had his school health insurance number (no, I didn’t). No problem, she went behind the desk and found it herself. Then she took us directly back to see the doctor, bypassing all the people in line. The doctor prescribed a shot to help Nathan’s vomiting (which Gretel gave him immediately after the consult), and a blood test to see if he had Dengue. So, amazingly, Gretel walked us down to the lab, allowed us to jump to the head of THAT line as well. Then she tells us that we don’t have to wait for the results, that she will watch out for them and phone me later. Ha! This is like the best visit to a clinic I’ve ever had. (Then again I wasn’t the sick one. Sorry Nathan)

A couple of hours later she phones us and gives us the great news that Nathan does NOT have Dengue, but a stomach parasite, and a simple round of antibiotics should clear it up in no time. She says she has the antibiotics there at the clinic and I can come pick them up. (This just gets better all the time!) When I showed up at the clinic I find her quickly, she gives me the drugs and I ask her how much will it cost for the doctor’s visit, the lab tests and the drugs. The answer? Nothing. Not a penny. I can’t remember how much it cost for a year of mandatory school insurance, but I think it was around $80 - $100 Canadian for both kids!

We had heard that there were more than 300 cases of Dengue in Atenas, and more coming everyday. Just today the kids’ school sent a note home announcing an “emergency meeting” at the municipal building to discuss this “grave situation”.

We only know of a couple of people who have been diagnosed with it, and one is the kids’ Spanish tutor, Miss Daisy. She told me that her symptoms were very minor and was only sick for a couple of days. She is back with us tonight helping the kids prepare for their last exams here in Costa Rica next week.

So, hopefully we will be OK for the last 4 weeks or so. You can rest assured we will putting on the bug spray as we figure DEET is the lesser of the two evils.

Earthquake!

There are supposedly hundreds of earthquakes a year in Costa Rica, most of them minor. Costa Rica is a hot spot due to the plate tectonics in this part of the world. As an aside, Rachel’s Grade 4 Social Studies class has been working quite a lot on the seismic origins of Costa Rica, and she had to memorize the names of the various volcanic ranges, the epochs when they first appeared, and the names of the various plates, etc. (All in Spanish, of course.) I was quite happy to help her with this homework because I found it quite interesting as well.

Anyway, several “larger” sized earthquakes have occurred while we have been here, but I hadn’t felt any of them. We would run into people in the shops or at school and they would say “Did you feel that one last night?”, and I would always have to say “no.” That is, until 2 nights ago.

Rachel and I were in our cabin and had just laid down, I was reading and she was playing her DS game. All of a sudden, she bolts up and says “What was that!!!”. By coincidence, the fridge had just started going and I thought that was what she was referring to. I started to say, “It’s just the fridge…” when I started to feel my bed move. It was as if somebody was under it and was shaking the leg trying to scare me.

It was the first time in my life I had actually felt the physical effects of an earthquake and it was really quite cool - exciting and unsettling at the same time. Instead of doing everything I’ve heard you’re supposed to do when an earthquake hits, I basically just laid in bed and rode it out. There was never a thought of getting out of the house, or down on the ground or anything like that. I would like to believe that the people who live here are better prepared than we are, and it made me think (for the millionth time) that as a parent, I am woefully unprepared for things I should be more aware of.

The paper the next day said the earthquake occurred just offshore of the town of Quepos which is on the pacific coast, just south of Jaco, maybe an hour’s drive away from us. Of the 2 monitoring organizations here, one reported the magnitude at 5.0, while the other reported 6.2 on the Richter scale. (Why the large difference, I’ll never know… Welcome to Costa Rica). There were no reports at all of any property damage or injuries, so I guess this, too, was a minor incident.

So, once all is said and done, the only lasting effect I’ll have of this episode is some lingering parental guilt for not having better prepared my kids for “the big one” (but I’ll get right on that, I promise…).