Covered in Speckles

I woke up covered in speckles from head to toe on Wednesday morning. I noticed them on my legs first, then my arms, and then my belly. At first I brushed it off; I guess it was just easier not to think about it. We were planning to leave for our trip to Togo and Benin that afternoon and getting sick would just complicate everything. I walked over to the ISEP office that afternoon to pick up my passport, but Susan wasn’t back with it yet and called to tell me she would drop it off at our dorm. I walked back to our dorm hoping for a quick nap before Susan came with my passport and we left. I was so weak by the time I made it back to ISH. It was so hard to get out of bed to meet everyone downstairs. I finally lost it. I broke down and started crying. Susan was running late with my passport, everyone was waiting on me, and I was covered in speckles. We made a new plan to leave the next morning in order to give me time to see how I felt. There is a group of Canadian nurses that are staying in ISH and one of them came and looked at my rash. He said he was pretty sure it was just heat rash. The only thing that doesn’t make sense about that is the night it showed up it had stormed and was really cold. It helped ease my mind a little bit, but I was still scared. My skin was really hot and I had a temp of 99.5 at that point. I went upstairs to take a cold shower and lay down for a little while. I didn’t take my temperature again that night, but I wish I would have. My skin was on fire, yet I was still really cold. I laid in bed in a sweatshirt and wrapped in my blanket. I decided to take one more cold shower to help with the temperature before I went to bed. It was a really short shower because I ended up shaking uncontrollably and was so cold. I went right to sleep and woke up at about 1am and my fever had broken. I woke up in the morning to a text message from Emma saying that Kelly got sick in the middle of the night and they went to the hospital. Kelly had tonsillitis and wouldn’t be going to Togo/ Benin. I finally decided I wouldn’t go either, and so we decided to reschedule the trip for another weekend. I decided to go to the Doctor on Thursday afternoon. She prescribed me with cream and allergy pills for an allergic reaction. She also gave me her phone number for over the weekend, which made me wonder if she was a little concerned about it. She also told me I would need to come back in on Tuesday, when they opened after the Easter weekend, if it hadn’t gone away.  I’m not sure if going to the Doctor made me feel better or worse. Either way, it started to go away on Friday morning, and it is nearly nonexistent now- whatever it was. If it was an allergic reaction, I have no idea to what. I’m just glad it’s gone. All and all, once the rash started to disappear, it ended up being a relaxing weekend. I needed a little retail therapy, so we did a little shopping in Accra and I work on my souvenir list. I’m glad Jamie will be here in less than a week, Ghana and all of its excitement is getting to me. I need a little bit of home, for my sanity. My sanity probably took the biggest hit this weekend. Coming from experience, it’s a little scary to be covered in speckles in a developing country where serious illnesses aren’t uncommon.