Helimutt,
You seem to have been most unlucky!
Been working in Africa, the Caribbean and South America for over 5 years. Never had Malaria, so I can't tell you much about how long the recovery will take but from former colleauges, they have told me that profylactics are ok to use if you're only going to stay for a short while in ''infected'' areas.
They told me that, the use of profylactics will ''mask'' the symptoms and delay the diagnosis which in turn will let the parasites get a better grip and the recovery will eventually take longer. These resident africans, a couple of them has it reguarly, have had malaria both ON and OFF profylactics and ''prefer''
getting it without.(due to the earlier diagnosis, symptoms)
Falciparum consitute about 80% of the deaths from Malaria, and is the most aggressive of the 4, and if let alone for long enough it gets to your brain (hence celebral malaria) and if that is the case, you'll be lucky to survive.
As said above, most important is to prevent the bites in the first place.
We used to spray our rooms an hour or so before going to bed, when not using nets, and cover exposed skin during night with repellent (ie. ears,neck,arms, feet)
Good personal hygiene is important to limit the amount of bites as well, think espesially about your ancles/feet. I allways use repellent on my socks and lower pants when going out after sunset.
I night have been lucky, but these things have worked for me.
The good thing with malaria, is that it has diffrent drugs you can use to be treated with, it is very diffrent with for instance Dengue-fever which is a virus and don't have any medical treatment for it, so you have to ride it off... trust me, you don't what to get that either (personal experience 41C fever+lots of pain) and the mosqito is active during the day...
On a sidenote, the normal reaction of health-workers in northern Europe to Malaria, is that is close to signing your death-sertificate, and you just shouldn't even go to places like Africa if you can avoid it......which has to do with the limited knowledge of the average practitioner as they are very seldom exosed to these problems.
Hope it helps, and good luck in the future!