Malarone - Trying NOT to get Malaria

While in India, we're given Malarone - it’s a medication which prevents malaria – SUPPOSEDLY.

The pills look like beige M&Ms with squared edges. The instructions state that you MUST take it every day, and at approximately the same time every day, like birth control, for it to be effective. Problem is, you have to start taking the pills 2 days before you leave, and for 7 days after you return. With the time differences - traveling for a day through 10 time zones getting here, you’d have to be Einstein to get the time right. It’s like Survivor: India, except the prize is staying healthy. My solution? Before leaving the US, I set the alarm on my Blackberry to ring every day at the same time, which like a MORON, I always get wrong, and the alarm ends up going off at 5 AM here in India, the WORST possible time.

Every night before I go to bed, I put a single Malarone and my blackberry next to the bed, along with a bottle of water. In the morning when I wake, the pill is gone. I hope I’m taking them in my sleep. I have a strange feeling that they are all under the bed, or that someone is sneaking into my room at night, and flushing them down the toilet, or painting them blue, and selling them as Viagra. I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of taking a single pill since I arrived.