DYING IN AFRICA

*cue dramatic music*
500am Wake up and the fever has returned. I assume I got chills throughout the night because I was wrapped up in my blanket in the morning. I got up anyways and read my scriptures.

730am Michelle and I arrive at the clinic just in time for the prayer meeting. We sit in the back of the meeting and I am overcome with tiredness. I lean forward, snot running down my nose (TMI I know but hey... it is what it is) and I close my eyes. Michelle leans forward and whispers that there is a place I can go lay down. I follow an older nurse into a room. Behind the partition is a stretcher type of bed. "Medaase" I say and ask "Wodindesen?" The nurse replies, "Alice" and it clicks that this is the famous AUNTIE ALICE that I had heard so much about. I lay down and a couple of seconds later she comes in with a blanket. She then comes in again to take my temperature from my armpit and then my bloodpressure (my pulse was 76... not bad for a dying person). Seriously, my eyes were SOOOO TIRED! There is some commotion and I open my eyes to Auntie Alice, Hannah and Nancy (two nurses) and a man in a white shirt who comes up to me and feels my temperature. He asks some questions and then Auntie Alice tells me she is showing me to a ward. Michelle follows suite.

838am: I am laying in the ward, got the chills again and Timothy walks in. He is carrying a needle, tape, a cottonball and a teal elastic strip. He has come to draw my blood-- he does a remarkable job-- even better than some of the Red Cross people who draw my blood at home (no offense but Timothy didn't even have to draw the lines for where my vein was!)

What my symptoms are right now? Teeth hurt, headache, eyes heavy, cold, stomach hurts like I'm hungry, sneezing, fever

900am Comfort and Gladys, two other nurses, come in to check on me... they are all SO nice. I don't even really know them but they had to come check on the Obruni Sister who is sick!

915am the doctor comes in and asks for my symptoms, I tell him and he writes it all down in a folder entitled "Patient Information"

930am Doctor: *is about halfway in the room walking* "You have malaria"
Corrine: 'You think so?"
Michelle/Deidre: "It's probably what the lab says Corrine"
Doctor: "Yes, you have it"
Corrine: *smile creeping in* "Oh okay"

Doctor leaves. Corrine rejoices. Doctor comes back in a few minutes later.

Corrine: "Oh. You are giving me a shot. Where?"
Doctor: "Your thigh"

I hike up the left leg of my shorts.... He slaps it a couple of times and then BAM! THE WORST PAIN OF MY LIFE GOES RIGHT INTO MY THIGH!!!!!! I just lean over and say "OH, OH, OOOOOHHHHHHH". The male nurse is smiling and the doctor just says "Sorry, I'm sorry" He finishes and rubs my thigh to help it. He is done and the end.

I get my bag of medicine and then by 1000am Michelle and I are heading back to our house to make lunch.