Nuku Hiva, 6-23-2017--Flu

By Pearl

I'm sending a brief post today to include folks who may not be following our texts on the Garmin satellite messenger. I'm sorry that we're back on the medical, instead of the adventure, theme again.

David finished his 6-week course of antibiotics on Monday of this week. We rejoiced in that on Tuesday, as we made a list of maintenance items to be done before departing.

One of the symptoms of his original illness was a persistent tickle-in-the-throat cough. It was very annoying both to him and to those talking with him (me mostly), as every other sentence was interrupted by a cough, but in the scope of his whole illness it didn't receive a lot of attention either from us or the doctors. He had a CT scan done of his chest while in Tahiti, and nothing abnormal was noted.

The cough gradually receded and was almost resolved when he finished the antibiotics, but was back within 24 hours (Tuesday evening) of taking the last amoxicillin capsule. By the next day he also started feeling a sore throat, and was running a fever. With the help of a fellow sailor (also a doctor) I got him to shore and Kevin of Yacht Services drove him up to the hospital.

The doctor, one of those who had cared for him before, looked in his throat and prescribed another antibiotic, saying that they are seeing a lot of patients with throat infections at this time. She assumed it is simply one of the infections going around and made no connection with his septicemia, despite our attempts to convey our concerns about exactly that. He came back with me to Minimus, for which he was grateful.

Of course we feel that it seems more than coincidental that David had just finished his antibiotics, and consulted our physician friend, Ramesh, who had cared for David while he was in Tucson. He recommended a couple labs, which we had done yesterday, but the working diagnosis by the doctors here is still a simple throat infection. He's to go back to the hospital tomorrow (Saturday) morning if the fever isn't resolved by then.

Meanwhile David is still not feeling well at all, with a fever ranging between 100 and 102 degrees. He's just lying on his bunk, sleeping a lot, rising on his elbow to take meals and liquids and taking Tylenol to help with the discomforts of the fever. Sometimes he's chilled, and other times his shirt is drenched with sweat. This is not the active, adventurous, socializing David that you know and love. In spite of all of the above, he has still not lost his sometimes dark sense of humor and he wonders whether it would be better to be buried in the Nuku Hiva cemetery or be dumped overboard at sea. He tends to favor the latter.

Needless to say, this has me deeply concerned. All positive thoughts, prayers, “holding in the light,” are greatly appreciated, both for his health and for our understanding of how to proceed in figuring out what is happening.