The following is an e-mail we sent out yesterday to my parents. One of those I guess you don't like getting when your grandchildren are living in a remote, isolated village in Africa. After living here for ten years and always sleeping under mosquito nets, with very little sickness, we got slack about our malaria prophylaxis. As in, we figured we didn't need to take our weekly dose to prevent getting malaria. Nor did we discuss this decision with our team leaders the Drs. Myhre. In a place where Malaria runs rampant this was a mistake.
"Scariest morning of our lives. We were watching a video as a family and Joe turned to Louisa and said, "That's disgusting Louisa, nobody likes to be slobered on like that." Warning bells went off and I turned to look at her and she was blue,limp and not breathing. She had a big glob of slobber coming out of her mouth. I screamed and Kev jumped up and picked her up and she voided, urinating all over. We thought the worst had happened. Kev ran with her to the car, still blue still not breathing, still completely unresponsive, eyes open. Everyone jumped in the car and we took off race car style beeping the horn continously, house wide-open, as fast as we could to the Myhre's. They were still in church, so Joe dashed out of the car and ran across the street into the church to get them. Jennifer punched Scott and they came quickly, until they met Kev half-way to their house. By this time he was in full panic and screamed "She's not breathing!" They both took off running. By the time they got there, Louisa had opened her mouth and was breathing. She had opened her eyes but still totally out of it. They took her inside and checked her out, gave her a malaria test and some ibuprofen. Her fever was spiking again. Her malaria test was POSITIVE. So they gave her a fast acting Malaria treatment injection and an another injection of a strong antibiotic. 10 minutes later, the fever was gone and her color was back to normal and after the screaming about the shots seemed to be okay. Kev and I were still shaking. The most of the church emptied out when the Myhre's ran out, so everyone here was aware and came by to check on her. We are now all back on the sofa, pretty shaken up, thankful for the Myhre's and thankful to God that Louisa is okay. It all happened so fast that it was scary, from normal to not breathing in less than five minutes. No more forgetting about our mefloquine in the near future. thought you should all know.
We love you."
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