Mystery illness

[trucksdeluxe]

Mystery illness

I’m a male, 51-year-old, I love surfing and usually go somewhere in Indonesia once or twice a year on a surfing trip and have done most of my adult life.

Every time I’ve been over for the past five years, I get a strange sickness on the second or third day of my trip.

Symptoms

Starts with fatigue and feeling like I have a mild fever and achy joints

Then I get bloating and mild diarrhea, and my body feels hot and cold to the point where my skin feels very mild burning.

I usually have headaches, feel a bit spaced out and end up sleeping a lot more than normal.

I don’t vomit or blackout.


Cure

If I stop surfing and stay in the aircon, the symptoms usually subside after two to three days, but I’m left feeling existed.
The feeling of exhaustion I feel afterwards differs from my fatigue while I’m sick.

Why

I live on the Gold Coast and am quite fit. I can surf for much longer periods of time than I do in Indonesia, even after I have no sleep.

I've just come back from Bali, and this illness hit me again, like clockwork on the third day of my trip. The air temperature wasn’t hot at all, the water was cool for that part of the world, and my surf sessions were quite short.

I find the symptoms come on after driving my scooter around in the daytime, but I don’t remember being particularly hot doing that either.

This doesn’t seem life-threatening, but it is horrible to get and has put me off going to the tropics. On the last surfing boat trip, they had to drop me off on an island at a nearby hospital.

Cooling my body down with a cold shower doesn't seem to help at all.

This happens whether I'm on a boat or land-based

I had Dengue about 25 years ago when I was up in Banda Aceh. I was in a Medan hospital for a week, but I've had nothing from it after that.

[foamy]

The obvious conclusion is that it is some variant of Bali Belly which can be picked up from food, water or even door knobs. I imagine you have thought of that though.

[Beanpole]

A mate used to change his diet to a more Indo style for a week or two before travelling to avoid this.

[alakaboo]

I'd get checked for malaria.

[offshore1]

Classic case of galloping menopause.

[trucksdeluxe]

Classic case of galloping menopause.

ha ha ha, yeah maybe

[buddy]

Intolerance to palm oil?

[marauding mullet]

Polluted water? E-coli. Pretty common in Indo.

[trucksdeluxe]

Legends! Thanks for all the advice.