My African Hitchhiker

As some of you may have heard, I have Malaria. Funny, but I am about to quote what many of my friends who've had malaria have said, "It's not that bad."
I was feeling a bit off on Friday (the most common complaint of early onset) so I went to the clinic to 'get poked'. Elizabeth (an amazing Kenyan who works there) did the job and as I waited for her to look at my slide, I wandered around the clinic with my friend, Gayle (a Dr. from America). I finally made the loop back and saw Elizabeth in the lab. I felt a little foolish about getting tested because I felt so good. She looked up as I came to the window and asked, "I'm negative right?" And she shook her head no.
I choked back a few tears and asked the next question that should come to any Dempsey's mind, "Can I see it?" She described to me what the malaria parasite looked like and I looked at my blood cells in the microscope. Sure enough, there was a half circled parasite hiding in my red blood cell. A mild case is a count of 1-2 and mine was of 2-3.
I went back to work and felt ok, but decided to rest after lunch and my first dose of Artenam. I had a rough night with little sleep, lots of aches, and strange dreams - I mean stranger than my normal dreams. So strange that they cannot even be explained. I was able to talk to my parents, Julie, and my brother Dann (he called when I started feeling really bad) and they were all encouraging. I was able to listen to my ipod and actually get some sleep.
I felt a little off yesterday, but only needed naps. Today, I feel just right. God chose not to keep this parasite from me, but He certainly chose to give me grace during my sickness. I didn't throw up (my least favorite symptom) and I feel great now. Someone in our group suggested that maybe I felt okay during the whole thing because if you start so high energy when it knocks you down to normal level, no one can tell. That was sweet - and probably true.
For the first time, I didn't work with all of the Wright children in one day, but we made up for lost time.
I leave tomorrow for Jinja, the source of the Nile. We will spend one night there and then drive to Kampala. We will spend one more night there and then fly out of Entebbe Wednesday night. I will hopefully arrive home on Thursday. My parents want to have some people over to their house on Thursday night, so if you're in the area and in the mood to see a million pictures of Africa, come on by.
Please keep me in your prayers, I can absolutely feel them. I feel like in my small time here I have been effective and I'm so glad for this time. I'll blog more details when I have more time and more depedable internet.