#Diary: Running with Malaria chapter 4 - Restoration
Therapeutic account of a six-week pause in Running with Mushrooms
November in Nairobi saw me curled up in foetal position, in and out of hospital with severe malaria. This is the final chapter of a therapeutic diary of that time. It’s long and I don’t expect you to read it.
If you’re curious, it’s an honest account of life on hold while a lot happens and a lot is learned. Check out chapters 1, 2 and 3 before reading this one:
CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2 | CHAPTER 3
We’re home in London now and I’m much better so it’s back to work! You can expect a new Running with Mushrooms article or podcast every couple of weeks(ish)
Mush love, Jess ✌️
Restoration
Reading time: 11 mins
Location: Buckinghamshire, England
Monday 27 November
Expectations
We’re back in England, shocked by the wintery chill after six weeks of African sunshine. My colleagues will know that I struggle to sit still — days in London are for producing things, writing things, meeting people and walking fast, pretending to be important.
These things can’t happen because I’m recovering pole pole (Swahili for ‘slowly’, pronounced ‘polay polay’). I must release impatience. Professor Chunge said to expect fatigue, weakness and depression for a few weeks, possibly months. Our family have enough friends who’ve grappled with malaria recovery a year+, enduring recurring annual malaria.
Coming into this healthy and strong, my physical body should be alright — the challenge is now mental.
Another warning from Prof: “Do not get malaria for the next six months; your body will not survive it”. Running with Mushrooms is touring the UK until further notice!
Wednesday 29 November
Kidogo kidogo
Our temporary home is nestled in a woodland west of London. My first walk outside in the winter chill is more of a slow meander. Kidogo kidogo, small small steps. Long slow stretchy steps. My usually yoga’d hips haven’t felt flexion since October.
30 minutes and a few hundred meters later, I turn back, hoping not to faint before reaching the safety of home. At this pace, every mushroom, leaf, insect, bark texture and mud puddle is a world I can observe and sink into. It’s beautiful.
Tomorrow I'll try and walk further.
Friday 1 December
Deconstructing fatigue
Who knew there were so many ways to feel fatigued? I’m alternating between these.
Sleepy fatigue: Heavy eyes and concentrated efforts to stay awake. Intermittent and random sleepiness; exhausted by 6:30pm.
Brain fog: Sluggish mental confusion, forgetfulness, lack of clarity, poor information processing, difficulty concentrating on a task, reading a book or operating my laptop.
Physical fatigue: Out of breath for no reason as body restocks the oxygen reserve. Talking takes effort; mostly keeping quiet or speaking softly.
Muscle weakness: Reduced strength; limited capacity for physical exertion.
For one month the furthest I’ve walked is bedroom-to-bathroom. The glutes, thighs, shoulders, core and biceps I’d been diligently crafting through yoga, pilates and working out have totally disappeared. I’m so skinny!
Twenty minutes of gentle yoga (no standing poses yet) is gradually restoring muscle strength, and it's frustrating to contrast my abilities—where five minutes of table-top has me collapsed with aching arms—with those in October when I practiced daily.
I’m trying not to let this depress me, celebrating small daily wins. Keep it up. Pole pole.
Haemoglobin head (HH): A sudden faint headrush as if your head is tipping all the blood out.
HH is happening less as my Hb levels return to normal, but every HH moment is alarming—the most recent, just a few minutes ago while watching Blue Eyed Samurai (which is brilliant btw), was intense.
The uncertainty of my current Hb level and the wait for NHS registration for a blood test are worrying. The sharp abdomen pain, present since the bloating, will likely go undiagnosed as I’ve had a similar sharp ovary pain since 2019. If I ignore it, will it go away?
It's nine thirty and I can’t muster the energy to get out of bed. Been holding in a pee for half an hour.
I need to get up.
Monday 4 December
Depression
Malaria robs you of spirit. Prof Chunge said to expect depression and I’m feeling it—too many consecutive days confined to a bed with mostly nurses for company, and the narrow world of veins, bruises, needles, medicine, curtains, bleeps, and bloeps. I want to walk, work, see friends.
Just had another haemoglobin hit and I’m so tired. Working full-time I craved an indulgent day of uninterrupted junk TV, but Love is Blind and Glow Up aren’t solving this tension between rest and restlessness.
What can I do to ease the unhelpful thought patterns that lock me into a depressive state? Go for a walk. Identify some mushrooms.
A wild thing, caged
Walking between a golf course and an empty field makes me feel like a caged wild thing needing to scream and get feral. Too much land stripped of wildnerness for agriculture and silly human hobbies. How many animals lost their homes for this horse to have a large pasture? How many ancient trees and their ecosystems were destroyed for these men to play with their balls and sticks??
It feels urgent: Getting out, expressing, punching air, screaming about re-wilding this patchwork quilt of a countryside, loud enough for someone with influence to hear. But who am I?
This excerpt from one of Elise Loehnen’s newsletters rang true today:
“Sure, we can all attempt to influence culture, to speak out against injustice, to fix inequity and unfair systems, to repair the planet—that’s part of our social responsibility—but it is up to each of us to manage our own discomfort and discontent when the world, and other people, don’t abide by our preferences.” Elise Loehnen
Feeling such rage over the state of nature’s destruction in the UK is fueling my energy. I could leverage this energy to recover faster, manage my reaction to this discontent, and develop the strength to do something about it.
On a cheery note, most of my bruises have stopped hurting. These marks, now familiar, are a poignant and oddly comforting reminder of what my scrawny frame has endured. While the buttcheek and left hand remain sensitive, the rest are fading—a reflection of the fading memories of invasive needles.
Wednesday 6 December
Resting and restless
Malaria robs you of speed. Life is on pause; in limbo.
What am I supposed to do? Resting is both prescribed and enforced; I can't walk far, exercise, or concentrate enough to read, write or process an insurance claim. My fingers are lost on the keyboard and I feel useless.
Before this, ‘patience’ was a nice word. Practising it now is fostering pre-middle-aged growth and maturity as I battle between mindful observation of the moment and toddler tantrums.
Am I mad?
Malaria robs you of confidence. I'm boring myself in pointless self-pity, with too much time to overthink and overanalyse the path I've chosen since leaving a good job. Am I on the right path, or am I mad?
2023 was a year of surrender to where the mushrooms took me. It's been luxurious, scary, a much-needed privilege after years of "hard work" in an industry that felt unsupportive and, at times, destructive to my well-being.
Six weeks of rest, hammocks, island life and healthy food in Thailand resolved immediate burnout. Camping, hiking and learning with friends in South Africa’s Kruger National Park fed my soul and reawakened the conservationist in me.
Visiting Cape Town in May introduced me to South Africa’s flourishing mushroom scene, and birthed Running with Mushrooms. One interview led to another like a literal mycelial network, building a global network of incredible mushroom folk. I’ve done 50+ mushroom ethnographies in South Africa, Kenya, Vietnam, UK, Uganda and back to Kenya… and then the malaria hit!
Burnout is a distant affliction; this decision changed my life.
I’m running with mushrooms because it feels right. Mushrooms took me to two refugee settlements in Uganda's southwest, revealing how fungi enhance the lives of those who have lost so much. They guided me through Vietnamese food markets, helping me grasp the spiritual connection that Vietnamese people share regarding mushrooms' significance in their diets. Fungi introduced me to a community of like-minded folk in the UK who could become friends if I make more effort to connect.
Running with Mushrooms started as a mushroom tour but has evolved into a bank of insights, which I’m desperate and impatient to share. I want to speak, present, run workshops, share my passion at conferences, in panel talks and strategy meetings. I want to see big brands leverage the learnings of fungi to make more ethical decisions.
I want to marry my love of mushrooms with my years of insights experience, earn a living, save up, convince a bank to give me land, start a homestead, grow food, care for the land, re-wild naked lawns, and explore the fungal queendom.
Is that too much to ask?
The more I crack on (“I’m on a mushroom tour!”), the more people kindly validate the journey by showing interest, rating, sharing, encouraging and supporting my work. If you’re reading this, thank you!
Monetising this thing relies on momentum. Many a grand idea drowns in the shitshow of the algorithm. Will anyone notice RWM—a fledgeling entity only just gaining momentum—after such a dramatic pause in that upward trajectory?
Thursday 7 December
Mycelial garden
My Salomons are too clean; fresh out of storage. Muddy shoes make me feel a little bit less lame. Less bored. Less tame. I’m defiantly not looking down, channeling Paolo Coelho’s advice to watch the horizon, not the ground, while walking. This lame act of rebellion is a sanctuary but I can’t control my eyes: they leave the horizon, flitting about in search of a fungal protrusion, a gilled break in the leaf litter.
This woodland is a mycelial garden; every lying log adorned with white mycelium, returning nutrients to the soil in a matted collage on the forest floor. Dead trunks flecked with spotty pockmarks show brown and white rot. It’s too cold for fruiting bodies beyond the trooping funnel, turkey tail, jelly ear or tiny coral, but this is a very mushroomy place.
Mad for mushrooms
Yes, I am on the right path. Seeking mushrooms, playing with mushrooms, making a mess with mushrooms, eating mushrooms, researching mushrooms, talking about mushrooms makes me fucking HAPPY. Aligned. Content, at peace, in balance, all the nice things.
Mushrooms make anxiety disappear and curiosity settle in. Finding a new species ignites the investigator within—a riddle to solve through accurate identification, interpreting all the signs. Always wanted to be a detective or investigative journalist, but I’ll settle for ‘insights person who mostly works in mushroom culture’.
Friday 8 December
I am not alone
Midday in the woods, with the sun sitting close to the horizon, the light is chilly, sharp, slanty and deathly still. Nobody knows I’m here.
Both my mothers want to chat a lot, naturally checking in on their recently-ill daughter. Friends are reaching out; I want to connect but talking is tiring at the moment.
I like being alone.
The forest floor is littered with LBMs (little brown mushrooms) that I can’t identify. This little shroom is abundant; loving the leaf litter, occasionally showing up in mega-clusters around tree stumps resembling an urban metropolis. Nearby, smaller clusters resemble semi-rural towns.
Mushrooms and people are much alike. We thrive on symbiotic relationships and interconnected networks. A web of connectors facilitate the exchange of elements that are essential to our growth and survival. Just as individuals contribute to the collective human experience, each mushroom plays a crucial role in the mycelial network, contributing to the overall health and balance of the ecosystem.
Just like mushrooms, we go through cycles of growth, adaptation and decay.
My current cycle of growth is about adapting to connection. I like being alone because it is safe. It doesn’t serve me any more. I’m reminded of that sweet passage from Tuesdays with Morrie:
“In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right?’
His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘But here’s the secret: in between, we need others as well.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
Psilocybin has helped me break free from entrenched thought-patterns, dispelling the illusion of separateness and embracing the need for community, bonds, connection.
Professionally, I suffer overwhelm at starting something new, alone. Today I make a note to reach out to those who’ve kindly offered their mentorship, wisdom and strategic chops. Grateful for your guidance!
Socially, I suffer a silly teenage self-esteem hangover. Today I make a note to reach out to all the friends and family who endeared my Sickypants updates, saving me in dark moments and sharing love, support and great memes. Grateful for you lot!
Emotionally, I suffer a stubborn independence; it’s weird accepting help. Today I thank Husband and Sister, who showed me that asking for help is strength, not weakness. Their infectious strength carried me through the darkest malaria moments. Now as I rest, it’s time for them to rest. So grateful to you both!
Out of breath and need to head home – but winning: this is the longest period standing since October!
Monday 11 December
I am enough.
This forest has shared unique treasures to identify and learn from. Today I walked a little further than yesterday. This morning I stretched further, feeling a little more muscle strength. I’m painting, foraging, walking, reading, dancing, cooking and learning. Husband and I have stopped worrying and started having fun again.
These activities are reminding me that I am a complex, intelligent human with interests, skills, capacity, capabilities, empathy and experience. A temporary illness, albeit lengthy, does not define me, and reminiscing my achievements is resurfacing the confidence I lost somewhere in a hospital bed.
I’m feeling unburdened of any doubts in my abilities to make Running with Mushrooms work. Recovering energy, I feel ready.
Being me is enough.
Thank you
To my friends and family who rallied to support, love and care for me while I couldn’t care for myself—You are the best. You know who you are: I love you and the gratitude runs deep!!
Thank you to Professor Chunge, Dr. Ruth Chunge and the team at Nairobi’s Centre for Tropical & Travel Medicine for saving me! Thank you to the nurses in Nairobi Hospital’s St. Theresa Ward and Pioneer Ward II.
Reader, are you still here? Thank you for staying. If you’ve had a malaria experience or similar please reach out; it’d be great to share notes.
You can find the other chapters here:
CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2 | CHAPTER 3
Mush love, Jess 🍄❤️