I was in a restaurant in Anderson, South Carolina meeting with a partner and a couple of contractors about a residential community we were developing a couple of miles away. It was July 3, 2000 about 36 hours after I had returned to the states from hunting in Zambia, where I had killed a leopard and cape buffalo with my bow and had hunted a lion for three weeks without success.
But that’s a story for another time.
As we talked, I got hotter and hotter to the point that I asked if I could exchange seats with my partner to sit under the a/c vent to cool off. Everyone ordered food except me as I began to get a little dizzy. I tried to keep it to myself but I was sinking fast. I soon told my buddy that I needed to get back to my truck and it was about 40 miles south of Anderson. He asked if I was going to be OK and I said that I didn’t really know what was going on but it wasn’t good.
We left the restaurant headed towards Athens and after traveling a couple of miles, I told him that I wanted to lie down on the backseat as I was really nauseated and needed to get horizontal, so he pulled over to let me move. As I was lying there I wondered what on earth was going on as an hour earlier I felt great.
Now I felt as if I could die.
I was shaking so bad that I felt like I would fall on the floor and I went from being hot to having incredible chills.
As we got closer to my truck I told my buddy to head for the hospital quick. I needed help in a hurry as I was about to pass out.
When we arrived at the hospital’s emergency room, my friend helped me inside. I hobbled up to the front desk, shaking and sweating profusely and told the nurse that I didn’t know what I had but I had just gotten home from Zambia a couple days earlier and must have caught something there. The nurse stared at me a minute and said for me to take a seat and they would get to me when they could.
I said, “Lady, I need help now!” She then repeated that they would help me when they could. So, I walked around the desk behind her and laid on the floor.
Suddenly, help was on its way!
The orderly and a nurse helped me on a gurney and rolled me down the hall a short distance to a small room. The nurse asked me what was wrong and I told her to lay on top of me as I was freezing, she smiled and said that she didn’t think that was appropriate. I groaned, “I don’t care, I’m freezing.”
I remember someone else coming into the room just before I blacked out, but I can’t remember anything else from that point on. I know from what my wife, Laura, told me that they had taken some blood and released me that afternoon.
The next morning, I felt like a bus had hit me.
I was extremely weak and just wanted to sleep, so I rested the entire day. Laura started investigating what could be wrong with me and went on an internet search. The following day I headed out to check on the developments I was working on and actually felt fairly good. But around 11:30 a.m., as I drove around the Athens By-Pass on the eastside of town, I started to feel sick again and things started to get worse fast. I knew I couldn’t make it home, so I headed for a friend’s house in Winterville.
By the time I got off the exit, I was trembling so bad that I couldn’t grip the steering wheel of my truck. I just did the best I could to keep it in my lane going about 35 miles per hour. I couldn’t even use my cell phone, so I just focused on getting to a friend’s house. Seeing his car, I pulled up to his porch and started banging on his door. When he opened the door, I headed for the couch and told him to get me some blankets. My friend, Ray, is a nurse anesthetist and was home from work early that day for some reason. He started to tell me about fevers and blankets and I just stared at him until he got me covered and I thanked him dearly.
Again, I felt like dying!
Eventually, Ray convinced me that it was time to head for the hospital to find out what was wrong. He called his wife and Laura to meet us as we headed for the “halls of little hope”. I soon discovered that if the hospital physicians couldn’t figure out what was wrong with you by using their limited knowledge about infectious diseases, you may die.
I can’t really remember what happened once we got there as I was completely out of it. But I had two aces in the hole that the physicians didn’t reckon on…my wife and my friend’s wife, Rhonda.
They were determined to figure out what was wrong with me!
What did the symptoms point to?
I can hear Rhonda’s voice now as she would say, “This isn’t rocket science, he’s got malaria, but which one?”
When God created infectious diseases, He must have not been satisfied with one type of malaria protozoan. He created four of them, one of which kills half the healthy people who get them in their bloodstream.
Cerebral Malaria is the most severe neurological manifestation of severe malaria. It kills over a million people every year usually by starving the brain of oxygen, causing repeated seizures and coma. It also can cause multiple organ failure. Many surviving patients sustain brain injury which manifests as long-term neuro-cognitive impairment. At least that is what research reveals.
All I know, personally, is that it’s a very ugly way to die.
Congratulations Steve, guess what you have? His name is Falciparum or cerebral malaria.
And by the way… no one knows it!
Good luck, pal!
I felt like dying, my temperature spiked in the low hundreds. I think 105 F was the peak, but the fever remained for several hours as I laid in bed at home begging God for relief. I had no success at the hospital as they told me that the Center for Infectious Diseases could not identify the foreign bodies in my blood and therefore they could not confirm what was wrong with me.
All that to say…no treatment was offered.
I later discovered that you can use the same antibiotics to kill every form of malaria, but I needed confirmation or I would succumb to the inevitable. I thought I was slowly dying, but Falciparum protozoans are impatient, as they prefer to kill their host in a timely manner.
How generous of them!
The morning after my second episode was much worse than two days earlier as I had no energy and couldn’t really function. Two of my prayer partners came by to pray with me but I didn’t remember any of the visit with the exception of recognizing their voices. Also, I couldn’t eat anything without puking it back up.
In the middle of all of this confusion and desperation, the glimmer of hope came when Laura told me that an infectious disease doctor in Lawrenceville had my blood and wanted to meet with us the next morning.
As we sat with the physician, he explained that the reason no one could figure out what I had was that when the blood sample was taken the protozoans were in the juvenile stage.
But he knew immediately what I had.
He said, “Steve, you have Falciparum malaria, the first case I have seen in the states. I need to load you up with antibiotics, quinine and doxycycline. The quinine is a little rough, as there is a joke associated with it and malaria that goes like this, ‘if one doesn’t kill you, the other one will.’ Call me if you need me but you need to get on these antibiotics immediately. When is your next episode?”
“Soon”, I said.
Laura and I were walking across his parking lot when I asked her, “What time is it?” and she said, “You should be feeling bad soon.” I got in the car and threw up in a bucket she had for me and the party started again as it was feeding time in the zoo known as Steve’s bloodstream. I sensed that this was going to be a nightmare and asked Laura, “Please take me home without stopping, get the antibiotics after you get me in bed.” I laid in bed in the fetal position sweating so much that I was sweating through my t-shirt and sheets and soaking my mattress. I would look for a dry spot to lay on. I was freezing, sweating and puking as the protozoans had a love feast on my red blood cells.
I remember a village I had hunted near the northern Transvaal of South Africa called Swartwater. I was told it was named after the last color phase, black, of your blood drenched urine before you die of malaria.
The entire village had died!
I thought I was about to join them, then an odd thing happened. I really don’t know when it happened but I believe it was the next night. A Pastor friend came by to pray with me and it was an odd Holy Spirit time. I knew I was in God’s presence, not delirium.
I started to take the antibiotics that night but couldn’t hold them down as I threw up just about every time I tried to put something in my stomach. I remember eating the pills wrapped in bread the next morning and sleeping all day. I suffered for several days with the symptoms but I never had another episode. I believe one more would have launched me into eternity and I was ready to go! But over the next week, the fog began to clear in my head and I knew I was on my way to recovery.
I had been spared once more.
It has always interested me to realize my threshold for pain. I have discerned over the years that I have been, as humbly as I can say it, rather hard to kill.
To complete this story, I will tell you that a dear friend from church challenged me to run the Peachtree Road Race the following year and even though it took me weeks to be able to walk any distance, I decided to go for it. I started jogging on a treadmill and eventually after several months, got my feet under me and about a year after my first episode of malaria, I ran the 6.2 mile Peachtree in slightly less than an hour.
Remember when I said a Pastor friend came by to pray with me? Well two years after malaria, he and I were having lunch and he asked if I remembered him praying with me and I said, “Yes, you squeezed my hand so hard it ached for days and for a long time I remembered every word you prayed.”
Amazingly he said, “That’s funny, because I had to pry your fingers open to get my hand free and I was praying in the Spirit.”
In my spirit I knew something was going on when he prayed but I didn’t know what it was. But when he told me that he was praying in the Spirit and I understood the words he prayed without realizing how he was praying, I knew it was the Lord saying that He was with me and for me.
THOUGHTS OF THE HUNTER KIND:
We should never discount God’s favor. He moves sometimes when we least expect it, and I must admit that I didn’t expect Him to move on my behalf as I had truly given up. But He confirmed again that I’m one of His favorites!
PRAYER OF THE HUNTER KIND:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13
Lord, I apologize as I’m embarrassed at my lack of belief at times, even when You send a messenger who speaks restoration into my spirit. Please keep working on me that I keep moving in the direction that glorifies You. In Jesus name.
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