Today’s adventure belongs primarily to CreeperPuppy. He’s the kid who was ‘under the weather’ yesterday and actually for the last three days. It started as a headache and stomach ache – not unusual – but late Wednesday it added a fever.
COVID-19 cases are very low in Kenya and he’s fully vaccinated so we weren’t too worried. But almost all of Kenya has high Malaria transmission which gives us a little anxiety, especially since we’ve effectively lived outside for 10 days at this crazy house.
We are taking anti-malarial meds and being careful not to get bitten as best we can. Still, better safe than sorry. So after Brian in Panama, CreeperPuppy became the second Adventurer to try out a foreign health care system.
Kenya has government and private hospitals. The Diani Beach Hospital is a small, 76 bed private facility with a very good reputation.
It’s a small building on the main beach road that is easy to miss. No big ER signs, no big parking lot like in the US. There was only room for about 10 cars including the ambulance so our Adventurers parked on the muddy birm across the street in a big puddle. They weren’t the only ones.
After registering they sat in a waiting room more like an urgent care than an ER. It seems there was somewhere else in the building that emergencies went. It was reasonably crowded, there’s a dental clinic and an optician there too all using the same queue but after an hour or so they got in to see the doctor.
The good news is – it’s not Malaria. The doctor suspected and a blood test confirmed he’s got a bacterial infection causing the fever and throwing off his gut.
They left with prescriptions for antibiotics, acetaminophen syrup to manage the fever and a single dose probiotic which tasted ‘weird’. He later said the syrup tasted like ‘slime’ so ‘weird’ was good in hindsight.
When they got home, Suaram and CreeperKitty had made some lovely and sentimental get well cards for him. We admired them in our upstairs living room, set them on the coffee table, then headed downstairs for lunch.
Surely you can guess what happened next. That’s right, the monkey bandits returned and thought the brightly colored cards would be a nice lunch for them!
After a couple bites they realized paper is not that appetizing and left it in the branches. With help from a gust of breeze to blow it down from the tree, we were able to recover it. A little worse for wear but forever with a story attached.
We finished the night with a movie and are super glad our CreeperPuppy should be on the mend.
5 Adventures Together 