Monday, March 24, 2008

Sickness and Health

The bugs keep biting but they are getting smaller. This year continues to be one of attack on our bodies. (You may remember the fly larvae that we popped out of our bodies in January).

It all started with me buying shoes over the internet. Because I bought shoes that I didn’t try on, they came a little smaller than I had hoped. Not to worry my foot got used to them except my big toe which ripped off the toenail and grew back poorly. In growing back, I got an ingrown toenail that became infected. While I covered it with triple antibiotic cream (our version of Windex for the fans of My Big Fat Greek Wedding), it continued to pus. I didn’t worry about it and figured when the nail finished growing it would be fine. And so it was for a few weeks time. Let me give a disclaimer here: I am not a smart man. Though I knew on some level that I had an open infected wound in my foot I never let that keep me from running through rivers, or wading in swamps looking for hippos while in Malawi. God has made our bodies remarkably good at fighting off so many things that should kill us everyday which causes us to do stupid things that the human body was never intended to do (like mentioned above for me or living in Michigan in February for some of you reading this email). The problem is that while waiting out this infection I got sick with malaria, giving the infection a foothold (my Jr. High English teacher would be proud of that pun).

This was my first experience with Malaria but I knew from seeing others and reading a bit what to expect. Malaria is carried by mosquitoes who are themselves infected with a smaller bug which takes two weeks to mature in the mosquito, which is why most mosquitoes cannot carry malaria. They die too soon. It does the same thing in us so this malaria likely came from a mosquito bite 2 weeks before. The alternating fevers and chills and overall aches followed everything that I read about, but when I took the science kit home test for it (which Becca was all too happy to poke me for blood that she did it an extra time for good mesure), it came out negative. I let the fevers come and go for another 2 days before I went to the clinic for a real blood smear. One thing that any African doctor can out diagnose nearly any American doctor is malaria. They see it everyday and the meds are pretty easily available. The entire blood test and doctors visit cost $1.20 cents (much cheaper than the malaria home test that misdiagnosed me). We had Becca and Emma tested too but they both came out negative.

While the Malaria symptoms went away within the next few days the ache in my upper leg would not. In fact, it got much worse. Feeling around the lymph node I noticed that it was swollen and really sore. This soreness and swelling continued to increase. In talking with Mark Guilzon, a doctor and new missionary in the Rukwa Valley, he encouraged me to get on antibiotics. After starting the Antibiotics, the pain decreased but I became worried when, what I thought I was feeling was a huge increase of size of the node. One doctor friend of ours recommended going to Iringa to get it drained. However Mark was coming that day up from the valley and agreed to take a look at it. He said what I was feeling was not one really big lymph node but rather two smaller ones. (While 2 is bigger than 1, I guess that size does matter, more so than number anyway). So I am continuing the antibiotics and today things continue to look and feel remarkably better. Three days ago I was in the worst pain of my life. Today, I am thinking of running. No swampy rivers though for a little while.

Meanwhile, Ian and Elizabeth are fighting off colds (Always blamed on the change of weather here). Becca also has a few scratches on her foot that got infected and swelled a bit. Maybe its something in the air (Maybe it is the weather). She will not be chasing hippos at any rate. But pray for our family as we continue to get bitten up by new bugs of all sorts.

In Him who leads through sickness and in health,
Zubers

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