I was reading Kottke’s blog and was scrolling through the comments when I found
this link by Mathew Honan about his
experience catching dengue fever. As someone
who has traveled and lived a bit in Asia, I had certainly heard of the disease. Passed by mosquitoes to humans it has a
really sweet-sounding nickname: breaking bone disease. Why is it
called that? Because when you catch it, you feel as if you’re bones are breaking inside your body. Fun, huh? Well, what
started out as a wee bit of back pain for Honan and his girlfriend (were they bitten by the same b*stard…wait, that
can’t be right…all biting mosquitoes are females…scratch that, let’s call her a b*tch mosquito?) turned into a headache
and then days of pain that his girlfriend described as “having someone scrape your bones with a knife”. The story ends
well. He lived, after all. But it serves as a fine reminder of the dangers that all travelers to regions like SE Asia
face, and how you should take every precaution (DEET DEET DEET) to avoid catching nasty bugs overseas.