Wow. Has it really been two months since my last post? Oops. Oh well. I honestly thought that everyone had stopped reading but one of my loyal followers convinced me he wanted to see the rest of the story. So JD Oldham, this one’s for you.
*Disclaimer: even I have forgotten the exact chronological sequence of events and probably most of the details.
**2nd Disclaimer: there will be lots of needles and blood. Just have to put that out there.
Okay so we get to the hospital. I am basically writhing in pain but of course extensive paperwork needs to be filled out, especially since I am not a South African citizen. If Kate Lucey had not been there with me to fill it out I do not know what I would have done…probably died on the floor of the hospital lobby. Not even kidding. (Sorry Mom, that’s probably not what you wanted to hear.) So we are sitting in this little cubicle and I’m trying not to move and answer Kate’s questions when I just start crying. I have never felt more helpless in my life. I’m not sobbing or anything. Just silent tears because, in all honesty, that is the only thing I could do at that point. The paperwork is finally done and we are brought to a little triage area.
It was dirty. I was sitting on dirty sheets. The floors were dirty. The people in charge of the area weren’t even wearing hospital apparel. We were waiting for what seemed like hours before we were even seen. During the waiting period, people kept coming in and taking stuff out of my curtained-off area. I was about to lie down and poof, my pillow is gone. Well that didn’t stop me from lying down. I was in so much discomfort and I hadn’t slept in over 30 hours. Kate was being so good to me, talking and rubbing my back and checking out to see if the doctor seemed close. Well suddenly a man walked in and started taking my blood. It could have been Buster Posey himself and I wouldn’t have noticed. Needles don’t bother me (luckily) so I wasn’t even paying attention, and let’s be real I was in no state to be monitoring anything besides the immense pain in my upper abdomen. Well luckily Kate had been there because the guy started handing her open vials of my blood. OPEN. In a country where the HIV prevalence is roughly 25%, blood is not something to be handled casually. He also stuck the needles in the mattress. I don’t even want to think about how many sets of DNA I rested on that day. The doctor managed to come in just as Kate received the vials and he quickly intercepted. Dr. Baart talked to me and listened to my symptoms. He said it sounded like a problem with my liver and that they would be running extensive tests on it. I liked him so much better than the other doctor I had seen and felt a little more mentally comfortable. I was then taken to my room.
It was a large room with about 6 beds in it but I was the only inhabitant. I was hooked up to an IV (my nemesis), tucked in, and then left. There was a 5-minute period where I was completely alone in the room. I looked around and allowed myself to cry for a minute or two. Then I wiped my eyes and told myself I had no other option but to get myself through this experience. When I had checked in, I envisioned being there maybe just overnight, definitely no more than 2 days. After the discussion with the doctor, however, I had a gut feeling that this was going to be worse than I expected. From then on I basically became a robot. I didn’t allow myself to feel anything. That was the last time I cried in Africa.
Even though the hospital I was in was tiny and dirty and lacked major resources (an ultrasound, which will come into play later), the staff was so nice. The nurses were so sweet to me and really made my time there better. The night staff nurses were especially great which helped a lot because nighttime was the hardest since I couldn’t sleep. One thing they kept talking about was my skin color. They loved it. They kept holding their arms next to mine and saying things like “ohhhhh myyy goooosh I would just loooove to have skin that color”. I thought they were just trying to make me feel better. Now that I look back, I realize that it was because I was jaundiced. The African summer had bronzed me up so the jaundice must have made me look golden. When I was finally able to get out of bed there was a small mirror by the bathroom that I saw myself in. Well, it didn’t look like me. I did in fact look golden. I was puffy from the IV. I couldn’t shower while I was there either, so it just got progressively worse. Oh well, I wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
I had expected to start feeling better once I was in the hospital. I was hooked up to an IV with a constant flow of unknown drugs and I had nurses checking on me every half hour, yet I just felt worse and worse. I still couldn’t sleep and time was passing slower than ever. I started to feel even more uncomfortable (I really didn’t think that was possible) and I knew I had a raging fever. My body felt like it was on fire yet I had the chills so I shook uncontrollably if I kicked my blankets off. The nurses started taking my temperature more frequently. My normal temperature was about 36.4 C (about 97.6 F). Then it climbed to 37 C, 38 C, and at one point reached 39.9 C (104 F). For the majority of time it hovered around 39.4 C (103 C). That first night was the hardest with the fever because the nurses were on order not to give me any medicine that acted on my liver. I was still in the process of testing and Dr. Baart didn’t want to screw any of the results up. They brought me a glass of cold water, which obviously did nothing. I finally begged them to give me something because the pain was getting to be too much and I was exhausted and needed some sort of relief. They gave me a half dose of the medicine to ensure it would wear off by the next round of tests. It helped a little bit, but in no way did it help the fever long-term.
The only way I was able to communicate with my family at home was through texting. My poor mother had to receive texts like “I have a fever of 104 and they think something is wrong with my liver so they can’t give me any medicine. What are you up to?” I’m pretty positive the entire experience took more of a mental toll on her than it did on me. I also felt bad because my days were her nights, so I would be texting her trying to keep her apprised of what was going on but I knew she had to be exhausted and I wanted to let her sleep. But basically texting became the link between us. She didn’t get to hear my voice until I returned to my dorm almost a week later, but at least we could communicate.
1 comment:
YES!!
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