Worst Sickness or Disease Caught While Travelling
 

I thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss. With the recent buzz about the TB guy, I'd be interested to know what kind of sickness other passengers have encountered during travel. My worst experience was catching a strain of the "Asian Flu." This is supposedly the type that killed millions in the 50's. It wasn't life threatening for me because of advances in modern medicine. I was given a round of Tamiflu, anti-biotics etc. and kept away from work/travel for 3 weeks. It was a miserable experience. I can't say for sure where the exposure took place. On a flight from NRT to DTW I was seated behind a sick lady (a last minute flight re-booked in coach) who was coughing and looked like walking death. In the previous two weeks I had been through HKG, NRT, MNL and been out and about in PH and Japan. It's really hard to say where I caught it.

I only traveled to work to get my worst sickness. I managed to pick-up the intestinal parasite cryptosporidium from the municipal water supply (in a city in Canada). Apparently they weren't using enough chlorine to kill it off. It is an absolutely nasty little bug to pickup. I ended up with horrible diarrhea and cramps for about 2 or 3 days. I was fortunate. My sister had a friend who was a haemophiliac (sp?) and he ended up dying from his infection.

My only other entry is picking up a case of pneumonia from a school field trip to a marine lab in winter. I missed a week or two of school, but fortunately my timing was right and I got to watch most of the winter olympics that year.

I suppose the worst sickness caught while travelling resulted in death. Diarrhea is common. I've been a victim. Once, I was certain it was airline food because I ate nothing else. My feeling is that airline food is usually not the bad apple, but it's always possible

Most of the more serious illnesses I've had have been at home, fortunately. Some of the less pleasant ones abroad include giardiasis in India (particularly nasty as it comes back, randomly, several months later), dysentery in Russia (undercooked fish the prime suspect) and, well, not so much of an illness, but a prolapsed disc in the Netherlands. That was rather sore.

I did manage to get diaphragmatic pleurisy in York, but that was my own fault.

I got Hep A in Kenya.. that was awful.. got Delhi Belly, Cairo Gyro, and the Cancun Splatter a few times.. not good either.. then, in Israel, had me some bad bad bad falafel, you can only imagine what that created..

I picked up Chickenpox in Asia... Still not sure if it was KUL or SIN where I picked it up, but I suspect a heavy, heavy sneezer in SIN was the culprit.

One of the rare people who never had it in childhood, and man did I suffer from it when it struck!

I was very, very lucky that it was only in incubation period while I was travelling and on the plane home, otherwise I would have been quarantined for at least a week and feeling very sick overseas rather than at home.

I'm mostly vaccinated for those things I'd see overseas, but I am still missing a couple of 'mild' disease injections.

A skin bug in India which killed off all my own protective bugs on my skin. This resulted in very painful and infectious boils in areas like my armpits. Took about 8 weeks to clear up, very unpleasant.

I was in an unaffected part of South East Asia during the SARS outbreak and when I returned from the region some people at the office suggested I quarantine myself at home just in case. I didn't.

I would have thought the biggest risk of serious illness for most travellers to exotic places was Malaria. A former colleague of mine was almost killed by it about 25 years ago and still gets the odd problem as a result.

E coli, while traveling in the US. The only time since birth I spent a night in the hospital.

Coming back from DXB, I caught a particularly nasty flu - off work for 3.5 weeks, and only fully recovered at 5 weeks. If that's the sickest I ever get in my life, then I would be happy. I do have a vague memory of trying to work through it originally, and attempting to give a training course while delirious :eek: I'm not quite sure what the trainees thought of that! Fortunately, I realised I was unable to continue and took myself off home and to bed for the next 3 weeks with a doctor's note.

I caught Norwalk once. Very painful -- http://www.elliott.org/archives/2004...ing_with_n.php

doing a 12 day river rafting/camping/hiking trip down the colorado river in the grand canyon, both mr kk and i were bitten by a deer tick and caught lyme disease.

we both got sick a few days after we returned home...three days of very high fevers and body aches followed by being quite sick for about three months...no energy, joint pain, constant (mild) headaches, dizziness, mental fuzziness, short-term memory loss. it was pretty miserable, but thanks to an incredibly quick thinking doctor on the big island of hawaii (not many of those, sadly) we caught it early and were able to eradicate it completely after taking antibiotics for five weeks.

we've since moved away from hawaii, but that guy gets a christmas card every year. as far as i'm concerned, he saved my life--at least, my life as a healthy person. lyme can be chronic if not caught early, so he's a hero in my book. there's NO lyme disease in hawaii, (and my husband's doc sent him home with a 'flu' diagnosis) so we just feel incredibly lucky he knew what to look for.

as a side note, we did NOT have the telltale bullseye rash. we did both have a small red oval that looked for all the world like a sunburn...hot to the touch, blanched when you pressed it...but no white circles around it, no obvious center point. it went away a few days after the fevers did. i got several more spots a few days later, prompting me to go to the doctor.

edited to add--funny note after seeing celliott's post--norovirus was going through our camp while on the river, there were 38 of us on the trip and about a third got sick. imagine a stomach flu, high fever, etc. in a situation where you have to carry all solid waste out with you, no real beds, 100+ degree heat, etc. those poor guys. mr kk and i were so pleased with ourselves that we didn't succumb to the sickness that was going through the group...nah, we were saving ourselves for something better! ;)

the upside of all this is that i wasn't a camper, really, had very limited experience, and was doing this to be a good sport...thanks to lyme, i never have to spend another night outdoors as long as i live! :D

Death may not be the worst sickness. I can think of plenty of painful survivable illnesses that will torture you for the rest of your life, perhaps worse than death... How about Fournier's gangrene, assuming you get your genitals hacked off and survive? Or leporsy where you will survive but your appendages slowly die off and you become a social outcast? Some may think those are worse than dying...

Hepatitis A on a camping trip back in '89. I was in Belgium at the Grand Prix and it didn't stop raining for the whole three days. Lets just say the sanitary conditions in the temporary facilities became a problem.

Took me two years to recover fully, even though I was over the worst in about six weeks.

I'm with you on this - there was an account in a Bill Bryson book about a guy who made it to shore having been stung by a particularly nasty jellyfish in Australia. He wouldn't stop screaming. They adminstered some anaesthetic to put him out of his pain. Even unconscious he wouldn't stop screaming :eek: :eek: :eek:

I went to the Grand Canyon not too long ago - didn't know anything about lyme disease - thanks for that info karenkay, sounds horrible.

Worst I've had to deal with on an overseas business trip was kidney stones at the end of last year.

A friend of mine was unfortunate enough to be infected with amebiasis. For those who don't know, its an especially nasty parasitic infection. As I understand, he almost died before the doctor's realized he had traveled to the third world and gotten this parasite after consuming dirty water.


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