WARNING: I won’t get into all the gross details, but this is mostly a medical post. You’ve been warned.
So I wish I could say that I’ve been a good, effective teacher and that I’ve been focused on exams week, but it’s not true. In fact I’ve been missing quite a bit of class recently. Last Friday, two weeks after I finished taking antibiotics for the staph infection on my arm, I finally got tired of the area around the infection becoming more painful every day. Additionally, and only possibly related, I had been fighting a general sickness around the same time, blowing my nose a lot, etc, and I found myself sleeping more than usual and taking deep breaths for no apparent reason, as if I’ve been holding my breath, which I might attribute to stress were it not for timing—the infection had definitely started growing again.
The doctor that the Peace Corps normally uses was unavailable, so I visited the Mombasa Hospital Outpatient Facility (AKA the ER, or as it’s known here colloquially, “Casualty”). In my first real experience with hands-on medicine in Kenya, the doctor suggested that it would be best to take a culture sample from the infection to have tests done, since it’s apparently resistant to the first antibiotic I took. That sounded like a good plan, and he did the procedure himself, which was quite disgusting. After he finished cleaning the wound and bandaging it, he looked down at the biohazard bin where everything had been thrown away and said, “Oops. We forgot to get a sample.”
So I left the hospital with bloody gauze on my elbow and a "best-guess” antibiotic prescription in hand. That was Saturday. Today I went back for my scheduled cleanup/gauze replacement, but also armed with additional questions about what appeared to be some smaller infections developing around my mouth, and was treated to a confusing game of find-the-paperwork, in which I was asked questions like, “Who bandaged that for you?”
“You did.” I would say, “Here, at the hospital.” They would look confused as to why that wasn’t in my file, and then send me back to the waiting room. Eventually I was taken back to the same room where the doctor “forgot” to take the culture sample. Upon removing the gauze, it became quite clear that the infection was gaining ground again, as —SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU’RE SQUEAMISH— SERIOUSLY — okay really, move along if you don’t like gross stuff… dark red blood and puss immediately began oozing out of two separate places and dripping onto the bed where I was sitting. The nurse moved to clean it, and I stopped him and asserted, “TAKE A CULTURE SAMPLE NOW.”
After he took the culture sample, another nurse came in and asked me if it was a bug bite. They suggested making a larger incision, and they were surprised that the first doctor hadn’t. I refused to let them touch me any more until they found all my files, because as long as I’m still getting questions about whether it’s a bite, no one’s doing anything.
Eventually all was found, a doctor I liked was brought in, and they made the larger incision. The test results on the culture will take two more days, so in the meantime I’m in the same situation—bloody gauze on my elbow, soaked through onto my shirt, and best-guess antibiotics in my stomach.
This whole experience hasn’t been good for my moral, and it’s even worse now that the infection is apparently attacking tiny little shaving cuts on my face. So, much like my last bout of Giardia, this whole thing has been accompanied by a lot of movie-watching in my house. Transformers 2 was terrible, by the way, in case you haven’t heard.
I’m supposed to attend a local wedding on Sunday, so I really hope things clear up by then, so I don’t need to show up with a Phantom of the Opera mask. I’ll have a better idea on Wednesday when the results come back. Stay tuned…