A severe case of dengue fever feels like this: shrapnel pitted throughout your bones, a head full of cut glass: vomiting, hallucinations, bleeding swollen gums, crushing weakness, chills and sweats, nausea like you’re in the bowels of a small boat in tossed seas trying to focus on a wall-mounted TV looping a bootlegged copy of Rocky III. And that’s the first week. After about seven days the bright red spots on your arms and legs — bleeding underneath the surface of the skin — spread to form a latticework of pins-and-needles prickles.

• Tags: Cambodia, dengue fever, Issue 3, Kim Philley