My general perspective on healthcare in Uganda this past week can be summed up in a few of the following inner-dialogue thoughts I've had recently (though I won't limit myself to just them):
"Is this treatment going to hurt more than the illness?"
"That's not what the last physician/nurse told me"
"I may be going crazy right now, but I'm pretty sure you are too"
Allow me to provide a chronology of medical trips this week:
Trip #1 (Kawempe clinic, Sunday): Feel terrible, get tested for malaria; told results are (extremely) positive, get anti-malarial drugs
Trip #2 (International Hospital Kampala, Wednesday): After feeling worse, get tested for malaria; find that I no longer have (never had??) malaria; told that medication I have been taking is either no longer effective against malaria or does not treat malaria at all; get proscribed new anti-malarials "just in case."
Trip #3 (The Surgery, Kampala, following Sunday): After some symptoms have persisted, seek another opinion; told that its not even worth getting tested again, since its obvious I was misdiagnosed before and don't have malaria (told, in fact, that no one has EVER gotten malaria in Africa while on Larium, which I am currently taking).
It's really hard to know what to believe anymore. Although this week has been a great study in the confusion that is healthcare in Uganda, it's been made less fun by the fact that I've been quite ill, and still am feeling symptoms. Do I have malaria? Did I ever? If not, then what do/did I have? No one can give me a strait answer that jives with my experiences, and because I'm a visitor I don't have a great sense about who or what to trust. It's been made easier by being with fellow foriegners, some of whom are also ill (although at times that also makes things a whole lot scarier), but it still doesn't help me feel comfortable with the decisions I have to make about my health. Add to this the sneaking suspicion that your weekly anti-malarials may actually be affecting your mental health, and you get one rather rough week.
No one freak out, I really am feeling much better.
