#malariamemories

I told the doctor (who looked much younger than me) that "please could he not prescribe chloroquine tablets or an injection.
"Chloroquine!" he laughed. “We don't give that any more.”
It then dawned on me just how out of touch with malaria I had grown over the years given that my last serious bout was in high school.
The late '80s were bad for malaria patients in school. Let me speak for myself. Because after you had carried your shivering self to the medical room, the options for treatment were limited to chloroquine tablets or, yes, chloroquine injections. The injection was fished out of a huge vat of boiling water. It looked really menacing so you would quickly ask for the white tablets. Which were very special in their own way.
One, they smelt bad. Oh, they smelt terrible! That smell I cannot even put in words, but it's stored in my memory and it's making me shudder.
Two, they were B-I-T-T-E-R!! From the minute the nurse put them in your palm, to when they hit your tongue, to when you gulped them down with water. And the taste lingered on long after you had swallowed them under the watchful eye of the nurse who ensured they went down your throat and didn't disappear into the folds of your sweater.
Three, (the one that takes the cake!) they caused you such discomfort in the form of itching. I'm not sure if it was an ingredient inside the tablets, or if it was my blood type (because there were people who didn't itch and who happily swallowed the pills). For three long days and nights you sat on your bunk, hunched forward, hugging a pillow on your lap. Scratching, slapping your skin until it was raw. The itching didn't spare the nether regions and it was so uncomfortable that you yelped when the sharp prickle came. And the prickles sometimes attacked with such viciousness that sufferers burst into tears as the "inching" got intense.
Water was a no-go area, even if it was hot. You had to make sure the mukonda of the cup of tea was dry, because even a drop of water was disaster. Sometimes for the duration of the itching, you wouldn't bathe or use Vaseline, and so your face looked ashy and utterly miserable, and your hair was unkempt, and you wondered why other people were so happy and you were not.
It was okay when your roommates were around, regaling you with tales of what happened in class and some brushing your feet to help ease the itching, but when the lights went off and everyone was asleep... that's when sickness became really lonely.
The nurse suggested swallowing the tabs with a pinch of salt. Or she would occasionally prescribe Prednisone, but it didn't work either.
But then we moved on to the Fansidars and Metakelfins, and Quinines and that's when I really lost touch with antimalarials. Until Thursday, when the fever came knocking.