Off the Sidewalk

Yesterday we took our first Malaria pills in preparation for our trip today to the Amazon. The prescription calls for one pill the day before you go into a malaria-risk area, then one pill a day while you are there, and continuing for 7 days after you leave the area. OK, so I took the first pill. Last night I had such difficulty breathing that the hotel brought an oxygen tank to our room with instructions to use it for 15 minutes. It didn´t help.

It must be what having a severe asthma attack is like, but I don´t have asthma. This morning I read the drug details (that I had carefully brought with us in case of a problem), and, lo and behold, it lists difficulty breathing as a possible allergic reaction. I´m not interested in taking any more of those pills, and since they are quite necessary to use in the Amazon, we decided to cancel the Amazon portion of the trip. Our destination was too remote (accessed only by boat) to be taking any health risks. So, remainder of trip aborted. We´re taking the next flight home (midnight tonight) three days early. Of course we are disappointed but there really was no other choice.  

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 11th, 2006 at 10:25 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.