Night 6: Digging Deep

Alright, Net Strike gets real now: last night - Night 6 - was actually quite hard.  For previous nights of Net Strike, I could get fairly comfortable - and a decent amount of sleep! - in spite of the Seattle occasional deluges and wind gusts.  Last night, however, achieved a new level of windiness.  My bednet amazed me with its tenacity, especially because it was nearly ripped off the wall a few times.  What worried me the most was whether the deck's awning would make it through the night: the wind caused the awning to make terrifying noises, creaking in a sickening way, to the point that I was really convinced it would break in half and crush me.  I eventually gave up on the minimal protection provided by the awning and rolled it up, leading to full-on exposure to last night's winds (which for the Puget Sound area, apparently reached up to 50 mph??!!).  Needless to say, sleep was rather minimal last night and I think I may need to add an extra shot to the latte I plan to get in a few minutes.  I'm venturing into the triple latte world, folks - perhaps now I'm a true Seattleite.

While I'd certainly prefer not to have more nights like last night, no one ever said going on strike was easy - especially if you're doing it to fight malaria.  The malaria parasites are very tricky buggers that can evolve very quickly against antimalarial medications and thus render them ineffective.  Right now, one line of antimalarials - artemisinin-based therapies - remains "completely" effective against malaria, though artemisinin-resistant strains of parasites are showing up along the Thai-Cambodian border.   (Matt and I are checking out some parasites at the Macha Institute (Zambia) in the picture to the right).  Recently, scientists indicate that the malaria-carrying mosquitoes - Anopheles Gambie - may actually be splintering into two different genetic types, which may make malaria control just that much more difficult in the future.  It just means that I'll have to dig deep and tough it out through these windy nights in Seattle, and hope that my faithful blog readers will do the same in order to support my and Malaria No More's fight against malaria.


To a tired Tuesday!
Nancy


Net STRIKE!  I'm sleeping outside under a bednet in Seattle so children in Tanzania can too.  I'll sleep out on the deck, bednet overhead, until November 4 (i.e., when I leave for the NYC marathon) or $10,000 is raised for my Team Malaria No More fundraising campaign, Lives for Lubomba.  To support this campaign, simply scroll down the page to the button "Click Here to Donate Now."  Thanks so much for your support, "saving" me and children's lives in Tanzania.