`Ortho Viral Fever' (OVF), declared the young doctor at Emergency in the hospital, almost gleefully at first - as if he had succeeded in a scientific discovery after torturous research. And then, when he realised it was far from a Eureka moment for anyone else there, he modulated the voice to just sound triumphant, shorn of the intense happiness one sensed in the previous declaration. Considering the fact that the patient was a young girl of thirteen or so without any earlier history of bone related problems, we were surprised about the `ortho' connotation and waited for the excited doctor to cool down and formulate his explanation. Eventually he did that and told us that OVF meant very high fever for 4-5 days, accompanied by body pain. Then the fever subsides but the body pain, with particular reference to aches at the joints, persists for anything between two weeks to four months, depending on the level of affinity the pain develops for one's body. Hence the inclusion of `ortho' in the name of the fever. Many of those in the Emergency room that day cluck-clucked or shook our heads in disbelief in sympathy for the kid, but forgot all about it after an hour. Until OVF decided to descend on us in our household - one by one, in some vague order, which we are yet to decipher.
Initially the blasted OVF just starts with high fever for a few days. Of course, accompanied by severe body pain. We realised that the doctors in the hospital called this Dolo650 fever, because that seemed to be the fixed prescription, on which there was astoundingly rare unanimity among the doctors. That itself is some kind of a record engineered by this disease, since usually no two doctors agree - neither on the diagnosis nor on the prescription! For the record, this author is not recommending anyone starts on that tablet without checking with a real doctor, who might just confirm that prescription. The body seems to constantly receive external heating directly from a thermal or hydel source and the fever is high enough for one to end up bleary-eyed, thirsty and weak after 2 days. When you enjoy some marginal success in moving from the bed, you really do not know where you are going -- to the bathroom or kitchen (because you have lost a significant part of your steering capabilities), until you get unusally kind words of direction from the loving wife (she is eminently qualified because she went through the whole process a couple of weeks before I did). And then, you find that you cannot move back to the bed because all the energy you had, has been expended in that 20-step sojourn. So, you wait, pretty much like the astronaut who has just completed an exhausting space-walk, waits to enter the International Space Station. You feel very flaky too, because you have no memory of walking to your temporary parking space five minutes earlier.
The doctors make it clear that OVF is probably just the staging area for one to get Dengue and/or Chikungunya. So, as is customary with hospitals, they insist you be tested for all these and few more things in one sweep. I am sure everyone has this experience of going to get a small bruise treated and returning home wondering whether it was leukemia or HIV or cerebral hemorrhage or something more serious. Until the 33 tests done by the hospital all indicate it is just a bruise. Likewise, after the plethora of tests (all those that hospital is equipped to do), you are declared a victim of mere OVF --without any likelihood of being upgraded to Dengue or Chikungunya-- by the medical staff, who just cannot mask their terrible disappointment. So, here is a disease which sets you back by a few thousand rupees in the `testing' phase but costs you less than hundred rupees for the actual treatment because it is Dolo650 all the way and nothing else. I guess this compounds the confusion of the already delirious patient as to whether be happy about the latter or complain about the former.
The patient is advised to drink a lot of fluids. The obvious reason given is to avoid dehydration, but given the fact that everything the patient attempts to consume tastes like paper (no, this author assures he has never eaten that but making the aforesaid statement purely on hearsay) and seems to involve forcing things through a much narrower gap where the throat used to exist, fluids make better sense. Water, especially, since as we all learnt during school, it is tasteless anyway -- Aristotle said so! The one single part of the body which completely forgets its function during the period of OVF is the tongue. While one can feel its physical presence at the appointed place, it is like some absolutely useless spare part added to an automobile, God knows why. You hurriedly go through this phase in life --struggling with anxiety and fear -- so that you can reassure yourself that this eminent part of the body will regain its functionality eventually! And, it does, God bless!!
But the most distinct feature of OVF is that the joint pain that afflicts the patient for a disproportionately longer time, compared to the fever that seemed to introduce it to the body in the first place. Two things happen with the joints -- one, all of them like ankles, knees, elbows, shoulders uniformly pain jointly and severally; two, those joints which already had a diagnosed problem, like one somewhat arthritic knee or one partially frozen shoulder, are blessed with special, incremental pain. As if, the bacteria knew uncannily where exactly the chinks in your armour are and direct themselves to be residents of such places to increase the pain value. One also is able to generally come to be re-acquainted with many joints and bones one had forgotten as a child. So, as a pure journey of self-discovery, I would rank OVF higher than most other meditative or yogic experiences -- primarily because the latter are not so easy to attain and require sublime mental adjustments!
So, here I am, after three good weeks, still struggling to climb stairs and lift somewhat heavy substances. My dear wife points out I have developed a unique style of climbing up/down the stairs, with the knees kept wider apart than usual and a resultant wide-angled movement so that a beholder would not, at first sight, know whether I am moving up/down or sideways. I live in the hope that eventually, after a couple of months, I would revert to my original style. But that seems very far off, at this juncture.
Initially the blasted OVF just starts with high fever for a few days. Of course, accompanied by severe body pain. We realised that the doctors in the hospital called this Dolo650 fever, because that seemed to be the fixed prescription, on which there was astoundingly rare unanimity among the doctors. That itself is some kind of a record engineered by this disease, since usually no two doctors agree - neither on the diagnosis nor on the prescription! For the record, this author is not recommending anyone starts on that tablet without checking with a real doctor, who might just confirm that prescription. The body seems to constantly receive external heating directly from a thermal or hydel source and the fever is high enough for one to end up bleary-eyed, thirsty and weak after 2 days. When you enjoy some marginal success in moving from the bed, you really do not know where you are going -- to the bathroom or kitchen (because you have lost a significant part of your steering capabilities), until you get unusally kind words of direction from the loving wife (she is eminently qualified because she went through the whole process a couple of weeks before I did). And then, you find that you cannot move back to the bed because all the energy you had, has been expended in that 20-step sojourn. So, you wait, pretty much like the astronaut who has just completed an exhausting space-walk, waits to enter the International Space Station. You feel very flaky too, because you have no memory of walking to your temporary parking space five minutes earlier.
The doctors make it clear that OVF is probably just the staging area for one to get Dengue and/or Chikungunya. So, as is customary with hospitals, they insist you be tested for all these and few more things in one sweep. I am sure everyone has this experience of going to get a small bruise treated and returning home wondering whether it was leukemia or HIV or cerebral hemorrhage or something more serious. Until the 33 tests done by the hospital all indicate it is just a bruise. Likewise, after the plethora of tests (all those that hospital is equipped to do), you are declared a victim of mere OVF --without any likelihood of being upgraded to Dengue or Chikungunya-- by the medical staff, who just cannot mask their terrible disappointment. So, here is a disease which sets you back by a few thousand rupees in the `testing' phase but costs you less than hundred rupees for the actual treatment because it is Dolo650 all the way and nothing else. I guess this compounds the confusion of the already delirious patient as to whether be happy about the latter or complain about the former.
The patient is advised to drink a lot of fluids. The obvious reason given is to avoid dehydration, but given the fact that everything the patient attempts to consume tastes like paper (no, this author assures he has never eaten that but making the aforesaid statement purely on hearsay) and seems to involve forcing things through a much narrower gap where the throat used to exist, fluids make better sense. Water, especially, since as we all learnt during school, it is tasteless anyway -- Aristotle said so! The one single part of the body which completely forgets its function during the period of OVF is the tongue. While one can feel its physical presence at the appointed place, it is like some absolutely useless spare part added to an automobile, God knows why. You hurriedly go through this phase in life --struggling with anxiety and fear -- so that you can reassure yourself that this eminent part of the body will regain its functionality eventually! And, it does, God bless!!
But the most distinct feature of OVF is that the joint pain that afflicts the patient for a disproportionately longer time, compared to the fever that seemed to introduce it to the body in the first place. Two things happen with the joints -- one, all of them like ankles, knees, elbows, shoulders uniformly pain jointly and severally; two, those joints which already had a diagnosed problem, like one somewhat arthritic knee or one partially frozen shoulder, are blessed with special, incremental pain. As if, the bacteria knew uncannily where exactly the chinks in your armour are and direct themselves to be residents of such places to increase the pain value. One also is able to generally come to be re-acquainted with many joints and bones one had forgotten as a child. So, as a pure journey of self-discovery, I would rank OVF higher than most other meditative or yogic experiences -- primarily because the latter are not so easy to attain and require sublime mental adjustments!
So, here I am, after three good weeks, still struggling to climb stairs and lift somewhat heavy substances. My dear wife points out I have developed a unique style of climbing up/down the stairs, with the knees kept wider apart than usual and a resultant wide-angled movement so that a beholder would not, at first sight, know whether I am moving up/down or sideways. I live in the hope that eventually, after a couple of months, I would revert to my original style. But that seems very far off, at this juncture.
