Sorry to be so MIA lately – lots has happened! Here’s the quick rundown…
We went off-island for 7 weeks. SEVEN weeks! It was filled with travels and visits with family and friends and endless fun. We spent two weeks in Boston with my family, two weeks in Scotland with his; we went to London for a week and Portugal for ten days. Add in a few days for travel and – poof! – seven weeks. We ate too much, drank too much, and laughed until our bellies ached. It was perfect.
During those seven weeks, our episode of House Hunters International aired and we had a viewing party at my parents’ house! It aired the last night of our trip, which was perfect timing to have a few laughs and share some fun memories before heading home.
After those seven weeks, we came back to our little island paradise and – wham! – both of us got hit with Dengue Fever in Roatan. In case you’ve never experienced this first-hand, here’s the basic synopsis: you suddenly and rather violently get a raging fever one day.
You think, ‘Hmm, perhaps I have the flu. This sucks.’ So you go to bed in hopes of sleeping it off in a few days. YOU DO NOT SLEEP IT OFF.
The fever rages and then subsides, you suffer from a constant flow of chills and sweats and – to compound that loveliness – you also have the pleasure of being in immeasurable pain. The aches you get with the flu are mere shadows of the aches Dengue offers.
And then you get the nausea, disabling you from even thinking about food (should you have someone to prepare it and deliver it to you in the first place because you cannot stand long enough to walk to the fridge and open it, forget about actually taking something out).
Then comes the rash and the itchiness demanding your attention. Your feet are suddenly covered in fire ants and your hands find no solace as you scratch the itch but another emerges to taunt you endlessly in a vicious cycle of “The Itchy and Scratchy Show.”
So, no, you do not sleep it off because you’re too busy sweating, freezing, scratching, listening to your empty belly rumble while simultaneously considering vomiting the nothinginess inside, and this whole time you’re trying desperately to ignore the aching and to find some semblance of comfort in the suddenly horrific setting that is your bed.
Moral of the story: Dengue is pretty terrible, it knocked me out for a week, and I’m just now starting to feel human again.
And we spent so much time enjoying ourselves on our travels that I didn’t really bother to post. I won’t apologize for that! But I’m sure some scatter-brained posts will make their way here in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
