The Dengue

Parental Disclosure: We write about this now because we can assure you that Alex is again healthy as ever, in tip top form! So, to our moms and dads who are convinced we are malnourished and ravaged with worms, don’t get alarmed and start arranging medi-vac helicopters!

Milkman says, "Hey, it's only a cow pie! Do you want 1 liter or 2?"
India can be a very dangerous place for a Bubble Boy.

Here’s a quick follow-up to the previous entry. It turns out that Alex had The Dengue. It’s actually called “dengue” but we’re going to call it “The Dengue” for that 19th century air that somehow so eloquently alludes to aspects of our situation. Anyhow, as The Dengue is known to do, Alex’s white blood cell count plummeted, aka he was neutropenic. I found this out when I perused his labs at the hospital, and in any normal situation I would have discussed this with him upon my return home. However, as neutropenia puts you at increased risk of infection -- think Bubble Boy -- and as you can imagine, the last place Bubble Boy would want to be is in India, slo-mo visions of Alex’s mouth chomping into one of our dung and fly infested apples overtook me, and prompted me to pick up the phone. I made a brief call to let Alex know the situation, and to tell him to take precautions like washing his hands and peeling his fruit. Cool? Cool.

An hour later I get a text message, “I love you.” Okay… Then, a few minutes later, “I think I’m getting scared.” Hello, violins! So I called to see what was up with all the melodrama. Turns out Bubble Boy searched “neutropenia” on the internet and convinced himself that he had cancer. When he told me his source, it was like “WebMD?? You two-timing ho’!” Come on now, WebMD is for people who aren’t married to doctors. You don’t see me ordering stock blueprints over the internet, do you?

Anyhow, we dealt with The Dengue just fine. His recent bloodwork shows normalization on all fronts, so I’m done with bleaching everything in sight and boiling our utensils, 19th Century style. After his internet disclosure, Alex felt compelled to warn me: “By the way, if you Google anything starting with the letter E ... don't get the wrong idea when you see “elisha cuthbert boobs” come up in the search memory." He had forgotten about it and momentarily had a pervy feeling when he caught it. But then he remembered, and and wanted to make sure that I remembered, that the two of us, impressed by Elisha's prodigious mams in "24", searched it together ... lest I think that Bubble Boy was up to no good in his bubble.


Ok, ok, that's enough of this one-sided blog. My name is Bubble Boy, and I only approve snippets of the above message. Yes, I had dengue. Yes, I had fever for 5 straight days. And yes, I was borderline melodramatic. The small detail that Dr. Park failed to elucidate was that when she described my 'neutropenic' condition over the phone to me, she also mentioned in passing that if my white blood cell count did not resolve, a bone marrow biopsy might be necessary. Now, even in my febrile state, I popped to attention at the thought of a 6-inch long needle piercing through my bones to the tender marrow. Nothing, not even Elisha's mams, was going to sweeten up that procedure. So, I went to WebMD, and after reading for just a minute, I was convinced I had cancer, malaria and a handful of other diseases. At that point I just prayed it was an infection.

Unfortunately it was dengue, but things are much better now. After my melodramatic episode, Dr. Park was infinitely more understanding and nursed me back to health. For days all she could get me to eat were Milk Bikis - so addictive that even nausea couldn't keep me away.