Home Sweet Home

I've been home for exactly one week now, and I. Am. Loving. It. I started having some symptoms of malaria on Sunday night so tested myself and sure enough...I gets it again. However, even though I felt worse this time, it was much better because I had my doting mom to take care of me. :) Thinking about how much better malaria is in the US made me think about some of the other things that are just awesome about being home. So I made a list (not necessarily in list of importance)

1. My niece Anna. I got to meet her for the first time and let me tell you, she's awesome! Not once has she turned away from me in complete and utter terror (like my patients in Sierra Leone do.....every single day). Now that's a good feeling!

2. 24 hour electricity. I haven't reached for a flashlight one time in the middle of the night. Flip the switch and there's light. Awesome!

3. High. Speed. Internet. I think I'd take this one over the electricity actually. I can actually look at people's pictures on Facebook and online shopping is fun!

4. The ability to plug my cell phone or laptop in at any time during the day or night! Sometimes in Salone I feel that my schedule revolves around the 2 hours of electricity that we get each night because if you miss your window.....you could be in big trouble! How am I supposed to function without my cell phone? How am I supposed to call people to ask my million questions????

5. Good roads. This one might not actually be good for me, but I'm loving it anyway. The other day I was driving with someone and they commented that I was a "crazy driver." There's a chance that the driving techniques I've learned in Salone aren't really applicable here.....gotta watch that one.

6. My church. I went to church this Sunday and it was great!! Not only did I get to see people that I love and who have been so supportive in praying for me, but I knew the songs, understood the entire sermon and wasn't afraid I'd be called upon to sing and carry a banner for the winners of the offering. Loved it!

7. The food. So far the question I've been asked the most is "what was the first thing you ate??" Well, it was Subway...of course! But I've also really really really enjoyed Milk (that's not powdered)! And Cheese! And Beef! My mouth is watering just writing this!

8. My family. Of course I saved the best for last. The luxury of being able to talk to them anytime I want either face to face or on the phone is so awesome! No looking at the clock to see how many minutes I've talked or deciding if what I have to say is important enough to cost them the $.40 it will if I text them. I really like that! :)

All this being said, as awesome as it is to be home and around people I love and stuff that makes life easier, I miss Sierra Leone! And I'm so so thankful for that! My God is very very good!

Driving Miss Daisy....

I’ve been here for about 10 months now, and in that time I’ve realized that in many ways, I’m an anomaly. First of all, I’m almost 30 and am not married and have no kids. That’s by far the biggest thing that sets me apart. There is also the fact that I’ve been told I’m “very loud and frisky.” Different. Another thing that I frequently get comments on is the fact that I whistle. I got comments on my whistling from my patients in America but here it’s an even bigger deal because only men here are supposed to whistle. Last week one of my friends told me he should beat me for my whistling because girls just don’t do that….it’s only for the men. Of course the rebellious part of me snapped my fingers and said (to myself) “Oh no you diiiidn’t just say that to me! I’ll whistle….and you’ll like it!” But after talking to a bunch of people I’ve come to understand that when a girl whistles, it means that she “has no training.” It’s rude. So to my chagrin, I’ve decided to try and cut out my whistling. Eeee noh easi o!

Another thing that makes me a bit of an oddity is the fact that I drive. I drive all over the country and people are always commenting about it. A couple months ago I had one of the nurses at the hospital ask me to teach her to drive. The next week I had another woman ask me. Then another. Ha! Well, I may have to give up my whistling, but teaching these women to drive will be a good substitute for my “girl power” that I’m giving up by my whistle cessation.

So last week we had our driving lesson. It ended up being two girls and the father of one of the girls. (When he found out I was going to teach his daughter to drive he begged me to teach him too.) All the roads in our town are dirt, so I was just going to teach them on one of the roads, but they suggested we go to an empty field. Boy am I glad I took their suggestion!

I underestimated how bad they were going to be. Since the lesson I’ve tried to remember learning to drive myself. Since I grew up on a mini-farm, I learned when I was pretty young. The day I got my learners permit I drove home from the DMV (which included some freeway time). I’m sure there was a learning curve but in my own hindsight, I of course, was perfect.

These new drivers….were not perfect. “Joseph” was first up. He has a motorcycle so he was definitely the best. After he the circles around the field, “Aminata” was up. Joseph got out of the car and refused to stay in while she was driving. He was too scared. Ha! Around and around we went. Although it was a big field, while we were there a soccer game started so we had to keep our circles pretty tight. There was a big cement block of some kind in the middle of our circle. Of course, for some reason there seemed to be a magnet that drew us to the cement block.
Joseph, standing on the infamous cement block, giving lots of advice, but refusing to ride with us :)
While Aminata was driving, we started heading straight towards the cement block. I didn’t really say anything, assuming she’d correct. You know what they say about assuming. As we got closer and closer I said “ok, slow down, turn to the right….” I’m pretty sure she meant to hit the brake but slammed on the gas. And we ran straight into the cement block. She was horrified. I started cracking up. Aminata, concentrating so hard.....right before we ran into the cement
If my car (Boris) was really nice, I probably would have been a little bummed, but one glance at the front of my car and I knew no one would even notice. I’m thanking God that no internal damage was done, but also thanking God for the great memory and the dirt that I can now hold over her head for years to come!! The good news is that by the end of the lesson, they were all doing much better and were becoming more confident. I’m sure (ok…maybe 70% sure) that our next lesson will not include any accidents!

On another note, today is November 1, which means that I’ll be home THIS MONTH!! Woo hoo!!

Adventure at the Game Park!

When I started talking about moving to Sierra Leone, one of the things that people always asked me was what kind of cool animals they have here. Unfortunately my answer was always “ummm, none really.” Then I head about this game park about an hour away from where I’m living. They have monkeys, elephants, rhinos, etc. Awesome! I definitely needed to go.

I put it on my bucket list of things to do before I leave this year. My roommate will be leaving about a week after me and we have a midwife friend from Nigeria who will be leaving in December. We decided to make it a girls trip and invite my Sierra Leonean friend Kadiatu too because she’d never been before.

My friends and I waiting at the "ferry"
As I started asking people about this game park, I started getting nervous for a couple of reasons. Number one. In order to get to the game park, we have to cross ariver, in a "ferry". And this ferry is super sketchy. It’s pretty much just a bunch of planks put together…somehow. They have a big cable that stretches across the river and 3 guys literally pull the “ferry” across the river by hand. In the dry season, this isn’t really a problem, but in the rainy season, when the river is high and fast well….you catch my drift. Rainy season is still upon us, so this was almost a deal breaker for me. But not quite. Oftentimes, when I'm contemplating doing something I will ask myself, "Emily, if you die doing this, when people come to your funeral will they be crying on the outside but thinking on the inside that you were really an idiot for doing that?" This one was on the line....and in tennis, lines are IN!!! The "ferry!!"
The second thing that made me nervous was the fact that because the ferry was so sketchy, we were strongly encouraged NOT to take a car on it (although one could theoretically squeeze on). This meant that we needed to hire motorbike drivers to take us up there and back. Motorbikes are one of my other fears. I’ve seen too many accidents firsthand and have taken care of too many accident victims in the hospital. However, I didn’t want to let irrational (or slightly rational in my point of view) fears keep me from doing something awesome. So this morning the four of us headed with our rent-a-bike drivers up to the game park.

The trip started off great with some beautiful scenery. However, I was quickly faced with a dilemna. I wasn’t sure where to put my hands. I didn’t want to wrap my arms around this guy….but where do I hold on? I had my fingertips lightly resting on his jacket ( I didn’t think he could even feel me!) but after a little while he swatted my hand away. Oops….must have broken some motorbike etiquette there. My bad. Then I remembered that I’d seen people hold onto a little pole in the back so I leaned back a little bit and grabbed on there. With both hands. Perfect! In hindsight, I think this is where the trouble began.

Since I was holding onto the back, I tended to lean back, putting my weight to the back. I also had a pretty heavy backpack on because the other way Africa tries to kill me every day is through the painfully slow process of dehydration. So we brought a lot of water! Every time we went up a hill my backpack tried to pull me off the back. Abu told me I needed to scoot closer to him. I tried, but if I scooted too forward, I couldn’t hold onto my lifeline at the back.

Then it happened. We started up the hill. It was rocky so Abu (my driver) had to slow way down. Way way down. As we slowed down I started to feel the pull of my backpack try to pull me off the back. And off I went. Right off the back of the motorcycle.....while it was still moving. As I slid off, I’m not sure exactly what happened but the next thing I knew, the motorcycle was on top of me. I don’t think Abu really knew what happened either because it took him a few seconds to turn around and when he did and saw me on the ground with the motorcycle on top of me he said, “Oh $*&#!!!!!” But then just stood there. I laid there long enough for the thought to cross my mind…. “Ok, this motorcycle is kind of heavy….and it’s getting hot!” Then he sprang into action and helped me get it off.

Unfortunately we didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture when it happened, but we did a re-enactment while waiting at the ferry. But he wouldn't actually drop the motorbike on me like in the original.
I felt bad for the guy because he looked just horrified….even though if it was anyone’s fault, it was mine for hanging on the back and having the heavy backpack on. I started laughing and everyone kept asking “are you ok? Are you ok?” I thank God that my friend’s dad made us all wear helmets because I did smack my head on a rock on the way down, but aside from some scratches and a sore back, I’m no worse for the wear. Also, since I didn’t actually get to see how it happened, I only have the mental picture for myself…and I’m cracking myself up on the replay!

After that little drama, our adventure continued and we got to the game park. It was deserted. It was at that moment we thought…hey, we should have called ahead. But alas, no phone service so we couldn’t have even if we’d have thought of it. Eventually somebody found somebody who found somebody who could help us. Since they told us the monkeys had just been there but had left to go eat, we decided to go see the hippos first and come back for the monkeys.

Our hippo hunt meant that two of us went in a canoe with one of the “park rangers” who would take us to where we could find them. They told us we needed to go one guy, one girl but I didn’t come all that way to hang out with my motorbike driver so I told them I wanted to go with my Sierra Leonean friend. They handed me a paddle. Ohhhhhh…THAT’s why it was one guy, one girl. Cause one of us is paddling. No problem. I’ve been in my share of canoes. Granted, never on a river with hippos….but still. So we paddled down, down, down the river. Apparently there was a monkey but I didn’t see it. We kept paddling and paddling, but no hippos. The further down river we went, the more I was thinking “shoot man, we have to go all this way UP the river on the way back.” Eventually, my friend in the other boat made the call to turn back because her boat captain kept saying “they’re running down, down, down” and she said “well why are we chasing them??? Let’s turn around.” So back we went. As we were paddling, I noticed little blood spots on my legs. At first I thought they were from my accident but then realized that I was being bitten. A lot! I was being bitten by these flies that cause elephantiasis (where one appendage (usually the leg) gets REALLY swollen! I am sitting here now and lost count after 55 bites…on one leg. So I guess I did see SOME animals! (Yes mom, I’m taking the medicine to prevent the disease when the pharmacy opens on Wednesday!)

The next group got in the canoes and headed up the river. When my roommate got back she reported that while she hadn’t seen any animals either, she had seen some elephant poop. So that’s something.

We walked around the game park a little, saw the little huts that people can stay in if they want to….but didn’t see any monkeys. And then we decided to call it a day. And nary an animal did we see.
On the way back Abu saw a big snake on the side of the road but didn’t tell me about it until we’d passed it because he didn’t want me to jump and scream and make us both fall off….again.

When we got to the “ferry” and were waiting for it to come across and pick us up, one of the motorbikes started hissing from the tire. They got someone to come look at it and started to fix it on that side but everyone yelled at him to bring it across to the other side. So they hauled it onto the ferry. As we were crossing the ferry (which takes about 10 min. to cross) the mechanic started working on the bike….and dropped a really important piece into the river. Seriously? So when we got back to the other side, the hunt was on to find the right piece so we could go back. When I asked them what plan B was if we couldn’t find the part (keep in mind we’re in the middle of nowhere) they said we were going to put 3 people on the bike. Say what? When my Nigerian friend heard that plan she said, “But we’re all fat! How will we fit??” Abu said, “Yes, that is the problem.” Yes!! Quite a problem!

Fortunately they were able to patch the bike back together and we all made it back in one piece. Although I never did see one animal at the animal game park, it was a really fun trip with some good memories that I’ll have to take back with me when I go home next month. I’m going to miss this place and these people!!

Hmmm.....

Some events have arisen recently, which have highlighted the differences in my culture and the people I live and work with. I was chatting with another American friend the other day and he illustrated it this way. When he arrived in Sierra Leone he was doing some training with his organization before he started working. He was in a classroom with a bunch of ex-pats and Sierra Leoneans. The teacher posed this question to the class. “Picture yourself on a boat in the middle of the ocean. You are there with your mother, your spouse, and your one and only child. The boat starts to sink and you only have the ability to save one person. Who would you choose to save?”

My friend said that in his class the answers from the ex-pats were either spouse or child. Every single Sierra Leonean chose their mother…..because you can get another wife, have more children, but you only have one mother. I was kind of floored.

Since this conversation 2 days ago, I’ve been conducting my own non-scientific experiment by asking all my Sierra Leonean and ex-pat friends the same question. All my ex-pat friends have chosen either their spouse or child…..BUT so have all my Sierra Leonean friends! Interesting. So far, not a single choice for mother (sorry to all the mothers out there….no offense intended).

When my friends tell me their answer, I follow it up with "why? THIS has been the interesting part. I will give you a sampling of the conversations.

Me: “Ok, you’re on a boat….blah blah blah….Who do you choose to save?”
Sierra Leonean friend: “My child.”
Me: “Why?”
SLF: “Well, I only have one child. I need someone to go on after I die and this is my only child. So I will save my child.”

Me: “Ok, on a boat…blah blah blah.”
SLF: (After thinking about it for awhile) “I would save my wife.”
Me: “Why?”
SLF: “Well, she came from somewhere else. From a different family. Her family gave her to me. I am responsible for her. If anything happens to her, her family will be very angry with me.”

Me: “Qustion”
SLF: “I would choose my daughter”
Me: “Why?”
SLF: “My mother is getting old. She will soon be a dependent. My daughter is a dependent right now but I am thinking ahead to when I am old and will need someone to take care of me.”
*We then ended up having about an hour long conversation about how his wife left him for another guy and he tried to get her back for a year but she wouldn’t come back and now she’s not even taking care of their child but has given her to someone else. He ended the conversation by saying that he would probably push his wife out of the boat, even if it wasn’t sinking.

So our answers were mostly the same….but I feel like the reasoning behind the answers showed our cultural differences. Instead of the answers being about taking care of the most vulnerable ones, or the ones we are closest too, my friends’ answers tended more towards survival. This isn’t surprising at all when considering the recent civil war and the survival instincts that that would hone.

Anyway, I’m not sure how good I feel about asking my friends to choose the most important person in their life…..but I did enjoy picking their brain and trying to understand them a little better!

So proud!!! :)

Two days ago I probably had one of my favorite moments since moving to Sierra Leone. A few weeks ago, our doctors returned from their leave in the US. This has been a huge blessing! Since we now have doctors to do the rounds on patients, I’ve been spending some more time working in the peds ward with the junior staff. The junior staff are technically supposed to have the role of a nursing assistant in the States, but since we’re so short staffed, they pretty much act like nurses- giving meds, assessing patients, etc. Unfortunately though, their training has not adequately prepared them for the fire that they’ve been thrown into, so there are lots of teaching opportunities.

One of the areas that I’ve been trying to work on with the staff is assessment- picking out those kids that are really sick. This week it was myself and a junior staff person taking care of 34 kids, so being able to figure out which ones are the really sick ones is really important. Unfortunately I’ve done rounds before and been in the ward for an hour before stumbling upon a kid that was barely breathing—but nobody who had been working in the ward for hours before had bothered to tell anyone. So assessment is key.

I try really really hard not to be preachy, so the way I tend to try to teach is that when I decide to do something (give a certain med, add an extension to the IV etc) I explain to the person I’m working with what I’m doing and why.
Two days ago I was working the evening shift, so that morning I was lounging around, reading. At 8:30am one of the junior staff at the hospital called me at home. The conversation went like this.
Junior Staff: “Emily, I have a child here who is very sick. I checked his blood sugar and it just says “low.” (Note: This made me proud in itself because we’d been practicing taking blood sugars all that week. The quinine that we give the critically ill kids tends to drop the sugar and since they usually haven’t been eating much in a few days when they come in, their blood sugar is often critically low. So the fact that he’d checked it made me really excited!)
Me: “Ok, that means it’s too low for the meter to read. Has the child been breastfeeding?”
JS: I don’t know. The mother has left, said that the child is dead already.
Me: Ok, does the kid have an IV?
JS: Yes.
Me: Ok, we want to give some D50 through his IV. Do you know where it is?
JS: Yes, I’m looking at the D50 right now, I just don’t know what to do with it.
Me: Ok, give him 5ml’s of the D50 and then check his blood sugar again in 15 minutes.
15 min later he called me back

JS: Emily, the blood sugar is now 101.
Me: That’s good! Ok, check it again in 30 minutes.

About 30 minutes later I went down to the hospital to check on the kiddo myself. When I went to the bed, the kid was wide awake and was eating. I went and got the junior staff and clarified, “Is this the kid you called me about?” He was beaming. Yup, that’s the one. I jumped up and down and gave him a HUGE hug and said, DUDE (I really said his name) YOU SAVED THIS KID’S LIFE!!! He got a huge smile on his face and just nodded.

I found out later that the child’s father came back a couple hours later and asked for the child’s body. The Junior Staff said, “Look, there is your child in the bed.” The father had already gone and dug the grave and prepared everything for the funeral. The junior staffer started explaining all about how the blood sugar works, etc. Not sure if the father understood but he got a lesson anyway. J Love it!

Why legs? Why?

Two nights ago, might have been the longest night of my life. Maybe. At least the top 5. It was Monday night and was on day 3 of malaria. Although I was tired, I was feeling ok so since I was supposed to work in the evening, I headed down to the hospital at 2:30. My friend saw me walking down the hall and as soon as he saw me he started waving at me to leave and go home. I put up a small fight but my heart wasn't really in it because I was still feeling a little run down so I went home. I was so grateful that evening because it was really nice to rest for one more day. That evening at about 7, 8 pm I was feeling awesome. Since I hadn't slept well in the last 4 nights I decided to take a Benadryl, knock myself out, get a good nights sleep and be back to 100% the next day.
I took my Benadryl at 9:03pm. I tucked myself into bed at 9:40pm. And I turned. And I turned. Back. Left side. Stomach. Right side. And repeat. What's wrong with me? Why am I so restless? After 2 hours of this, I decided to get up and take another Benadryl. Really knock myself out. I also took some Tylenol because...well, it was my new best friend and I remembered from grad school that sometimes if old people are having trouble sleeping it's because they're in pain and Tylenol can help. Well, I am almost 30 so if it works for them, maybe it will work for me. Also, my legs felt really weird. They were tingling and would occasionally have little bursts of pain that would sometimes make my leg shoot out almost involuntarily. Eh?
I laid in bed for the next hour, it all of the sudden struck me. Mosquito repellent. Because I was planning on working that evening, and because I am now terrified of mosquitoes, I'd doused myself in the stuff before going down to the hospital. Maybe a little TOO much. So at about 12:30 I got up to take a shower and scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed my legs to try and get all the DEET off. There, I thought. That should be better.
After another hour and a half, it hadn't changed. But I'd began to notice something. The pains only came when my legs were still. As soon as I moved them they'd be better for about 5 seconds or so, and then the pain/tingling would come back. So as long as I kept moving my feet every five seconds, I was good. But that isn't all that conducive to a good REM cycle. I tried to do a little tap tap of my feet to see if that would be good enough to keep the pains away...not so much. As I was telling this story to my friends in the hospital, we were all laughing at the thought of my legs shooting out involuntarily from pain and trying to sleep while still moving my feet.....but I'll be honest, at 2am I wasn't laughing.
Although I've never had this problem before, I thought this sounded like Restless Leg Syndrome.....because that's exactly what it felt like. My legs were annoyingly restless! Google time. The Internet is AWESOME here at 2am by the way! (And by awesome I mean it takes 2 minutes to download a page instead of 8). Anyway, as I as reading, some of the causes that stood out to me were
1. New illness (check).
2. New medication (check).
3 Stress (check).
4. Iron deficiency anemia. I went into the bathroom to look at my conjunctiva. Nope, pink as ever. Ok, so it's probably not that one.
Then I went to the cures.
1. Lots of drugs that I don't have here.
2. Massage- I started rubbing my legs.
3. Stretching- I went back to my cheerleading days and started doing all these leg stretches, while still continuing to massage them at the same time....all on my bed....under the safety of my mosquito net.
3. Walking- By 4am with no improvement, I decided it was time for a walk. I walked down to the hospital (although I didn't go in because I didn't want to answer the questions about why I was creepily walking around at 4am). Was that enough walking? The Internet didn't specify the distance I needed to walk for a cure.
4. Warm baths- I don't have a bathtub so when I got back from my walk I heated up some water and just kind of poured it over my legs. As good as I'm going to get.
Hopeful, I headed back to bed. None of my remedies worked. I laid there until 7 and decided it was late enough and went over to the doctor's house to say "What the heck is wrong with me?????" and "Is this going to last forever?????"
After talking with them, we decided that it might have been caused by toxic DEET exposure (he knew of someone who was admitted into the ICU after putting mosquito repellent on in July when it was really hot, causing her pores to be open and absorb a lot). Another possible cause was the fact that the day before I had taken
a. Artusunate for my malaria
b. Keflex for my knee infection
c. Bactrim for my ear infection
d. Benadryl to knock me out and
e. Tylenol for my aches and pains. Since I usually take NO medicines, it might have just been too much for my body to handle.
Anyway, I am SOOO happy to report that last night my legs stayed right where they were supposed to and nary a tingle was felt. I am now considering myself officially cured from malaria (I know, I know, it's with me for life) and am back to normal!! Thank you Jesus!

Mal. Aaaaaaaria.

About 2 weeks ago, I fell down while walking to church. For those who know me well this won't really come as a surprise. In high school I was "voted" most clumsy which if I remember right really just involved my friend who was the editor of the yearbook sitting around telling the rest of the staff all the times I'd humiliated myself in the last 4 years. (Amy...correct me if I'm wrong.) :) Anyway, I fell down. I scraped my knee. No big deal. Well, about 2 weeks later part of it still wasn't healing so although I was hoping my superb immune system would mount a last ditch response, I finally broke down and started taking antibiotics.
This led me to think about the medicines I've had to take while here. I had a whole blog written in my head about how the medicine I've had to here hasn't been for the crazy things like malaria, dysentery, typhoid, etc. but for things like an infected scratched cornea, a perforated eardrum (twice) and now for a silly little fall.
So I had the blog written in my head and was getting ready to post it when I go it. IT. Mal. Aaaaaaaria!!! (Earlier this year I went to a lecture on malaria by a malariaologist?? and that's how he said it. In the scary ghost stories by the campfire voice.)
I stopped taking my malaria medicne a couple months after arriving in the country. Before you go postal on me (Aunt Berta), let me explain. I really really really like my liver and kidneys. And I couldn't find any studies that showed the long term effects of taking an antimalarial. Since I could potentially be here for lots of years, I was leery about taking them for so long. I've heard some horror stories about patients on dialysis who SWEAR it was because of the malaria med they took. Anyway, upon the advice of some friends, I went and picked up a bunch of malaria test kits and anytime I feel weird...even if it's just a headache, I do a quick test. My plan was to most likely get malaria eventually but catch it early so it doesn't kill me.
On Saturday I wasn't feeling too bright. But I could account for all of my symptoms.
1. Every muscle in my body aching.- On Friday evening I returned from a road trip which had me on the worst roads I've ever been on here....for 7 hours. Of course I'm achy.
2. Headache.-The last three times I've gone on a road trip I've gotten a really bad headache. I think it's because I don't drink a lot (not a lot of rest stops in Sierra Leone) so I get dehydrated.
3. Lightheaded/nauseated.- I hadn't slept well the last two nights so I knew I was tired. And my symptoms weren't that bad so it could totally be attributed to fatigue.
4. Fever. I checked my temp and it was 101.2. This would normally be a dead giveaway since I don't remember having a fever....ever. BUT I have this dang infection in my knee so....
Anyway, I did my little test and sure enough, positive. But BARELY!! I think I did catch it pretty early.
I took some Tylenol and started my malaria treatment. About 40 minutes later I started sweating profusely when my fever broke. But I felt a TON better! The fever was gone, the aches were gone. In fact, I went back down to the hospital because they were swamped and I told my friend I'd come help if I could. However, after a couple of hours I started to feel not so awesome again so I went home.
Tylenol is my new best friend. It was incredible to see the difference that it made. By that evening, I could tell exactly when my four hours were up because at about 3 hours 45 min. my fever would start going up, the achyness would come back and I'd want to throw up again. But after I popped a pill, I'd start feeling better soon! As I went to sleep, I thought "Hey, this malaria isn't too bad...."

That night was a rough one. Even though I've been giving Tylenol to my patients for years, all of the sudden I couldn't remember if the max dose for 24 hours was 2 grams or 4. I knew my spleen was already taking a hit from this malaria so I didn't want to mess up my liver too so I didn't take my Tylenol when I probaby should have. I didn't really sleep that night.

I also discovered that I'm not a very good patient. At one point I was shivering so bad and figured I had a temperature but instead of doing what I always tell my kiddo's moms to do (tepid sponging, take the winter hat off, etc.) I went and got my sweatshirt, blanket and socks on. I was sooo cold! Temp: 103.3. Oops. I didn't care. Definitely time for some Tylenol....liver damage...who cares? An hour later I was drenched. Tylenol, you're awesome.

In the morning, I was tired but feeling better. I was able to stop my Every 4 hour Tylenol schedule. I did "call in sick" for the first time in my life, but I don't think people would have known I was sick if they hadn't announced it in church. :) I had lots of visitors come to say "Osh ya?" (It means.....I'm sorry for you! I've said that to hundreds of patients...my first time having it said to me!) :)

Anyway, it's now almost 4am and I've been up for a couple hours. I couldn't really sleep and my fever went back up again but not nearly as bad as last night. All in all I'm thanking God so much for his protection! I know malaria is nothing to take lightly but I'm thankful I didn't get too sick and now have some antibodies! So thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers! In terms of getting a disease that I've seen kill so many, I'm very very blessed!