I'm surprised you don't have more dengue up there. It's not so far away. All it takes is one person on vacation to get it and then go back home. Then they get bitten by one or two mosquitoes and begin passing it around. When people get it here, we get it in waves. When I got it the first time, there were five other people in my neighborhood who got it.
One thing people need to know about dengue - absolutely DO NOT TAKE NSAIDs FOR THE PAIN!!! NSAIDs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, decrease your platelet count. And so does dengue. There are four types of dengue, one of them is the hemorrhagic variety - t's pretty much like ebola - you start bleeding, you will even see blood under your skin like a bruise even if you haven't been hit there. The other three kinds are not quite as dangerous, unless you load up on NSAIDs. If you take NSAIDs and you have the hemorrhagic kind, you're pretty much toast. There's no real treatment for that kind other than IV fluids and blood transfusions. If you can't stop the bleeding, well . . .
Even the classical forms of dengue (that means non hemorrhagic) can be dangerous if your platelet count gets low enough. That happened to me and I had to call some friends to get a blood transfusion. Of course, I had complicated everything because I had taken tons of NSAIDs (injections, even!) in the days before I realized it was dengue. The pain and discomfort were unimaginable! I kept squirming around and moaning, I just couldn't get comfortable. I didn't know it was dengue!
I went to the doc when I first got sick, but he thought it was just food poisoning. After a few more days of pain, I finally went back for some more tests and he called me that afternoon and told me to get to the hospital because my platelets were dangerously low. This was my second bout with dengue. The first time, I didn't take anything for the pain and just suffered through it. I still ended up in the hospital but my platelets didn't get as low as the second time - when I used the NSAIDs. It was kind of scary. The doc told me not to brush my teeth in case my gums bled. And when I told her I was getting my period in a few days, she said "no, you can't have it now!"
How did I not know I had dengue again? Because it's like any bad flu, you don't know what it is at first and it could be almost anything. But I really should have had a clue because the headaches and body aches are murder - the squirming and moaning. I haven't had the "flu" in thirty years and really had nothing to compare symptoms to.
The first time I had dengue, I had a hard time eating. I didn't want food in my mouth, it was so gross to chew it. I knew if I starved myself it would make things worse so I even bought baby food in jars so I wouldn't have to chew, I could just swallow the food to get it down. But that didn't happen with the second time I had dengue - my appetite was strong and it didn't bother me at all to have food in my mouth. The pain was worse, though. So was the dehydration. I was pale and a puncture wound in my leg turned my whole thigh purple.
Your first clue with dengue: major headache, like none you've ever had, probably right behind the eyes. You'll need something really strong to get it to back off. And it won't go away after a couple of days, body aches follow shortly after, with lots of squirming. You are so uncomfortable, you keep moving around, it's really hard to lie still. So stick with tylenol or narcotics that are NSAID-free until you can rule out dengue, do not use ibuprofen or other NSAIDs. It could prove fatal in the worst case.
