The night was a restless one for me, but that is nothing new. Since I was a child there is an innocent unrest in me for the birthday to come. Much like a child wakes often for Christmas and peeks for Santa I woke to wait and see when my mother would decorate the hallway outside my door with tides of happy birthday and streamers and of course, the all important presents.
This has caused a serious reality check for me in these later years that I’ve learned to deal with as you get older and your birthdays has less significance if YOU do not do something about it and make it into a special day.
Here, you could also blame it on the heat that rises every day. Into the objects you sit on, into the air, and into your skin the heat seeps like molasses that refuses to end being poured. Over everything it covers and over everything it has domain. The stickiness and uncomforting of all that are affected by it makes sitting still for very long nearly impossible and the prospect of the pool not a luxury but instead a necessity.
Even the locals make comments of the heat and of it already beginning to be hot, and all of them give a clever wink when you say ‘if this is bad, what is coming?’
When the morning did come I rolled out of bed at seven fifteen to catch the morning devotional of the hospital staff. I sat next to David Katota and another man I should know the name of but draw a blank trying to think of.
David gave a devotional on the psalm that talk about our days being short and realizing that the life we have IS short and we should do our best to enjoy what we have while we have it. Good thing to hear on your birthday.
(For those who are weak of stomach, this won’t be bad but you might just want to skip this entry, it is a detail of the surgery I had the opportunity to watch)
After the devotional he walked up to me and winked as he always does and told me happy birthday and we headed into the idle room for the doctor and nurses that aren’t from Zambia. He had Tanis check on two patients that worried him with their progress over night and waited for her. When she came it became apparent he’d need to work on the woman in the ER or Critical Care room before the Thyroid surgery that I had come to see.
The Theatre was set and the woman was prepped and I watched an hour and a half surgery of a search of the bowel for the obstruction. To see the large intestine as a huge thing in a woman that weighed only 33 kg was absolutely amazing. David patiently looked around it and when he found the obstruction he let Mareshah take a picture of it and then he fixed it and still continued to look for anything else wrong.
He then helped the woman’s bowel that hadn’t been emptied in more than a week because of the obstruction or knot that had formed (I never did understand which it was) and unfortunately her body couldn’t hold all of it and let some come out involuntarily to our noses content.
David closed her up carefully, while teasing Mareshah all the way along (he always needs a victim, you see) and then it was time for tea. The surgery had gone a little long, come to think of it the surgery itself was longer then I said, it went from 8:20-10:00.
We had Tea, as the doctor is Irish so tea is vital (was helpful, as I hadn’t had breakfast) and then we headed back to the theatre at about eleven but the surgery didn’t start until eleven fifty.
The woman had a large mount on her throat from thyroid problems and I watched as David prepped a tiny hold around that mount for him to work and we got on stools to watch.
It was a process of cutting around it very, very carefully which makes it a three hour surgery at the minimum. He has to, for Africans that do not have the option of a medicine for the condition, leave part of the thyroid there when he does it and take out the part that is inflamed. This leaves it functioning but not functioning correctly but it is still needed.
At 12:50 I had to leave, to go to lunch with the Whitfield’s where we had Tiger Fish casserole type thing that was absolutely delicious but before I left I saw the thyroid that looked like an inflamed prostate.
It also, to my unskilled eyes, looked a lot like the tumor that had grown in the girl that I watched as well. It is amazing to me how similar things look in our body but are completely different and serve completely different purposes and functions.
After that I took a long nap for the time lost over night of laying awake the majority of the night despite covering my arms and head in cold water during the night which usually works to put me back to sleep despite the heat.
I have just woken up and plan to head to the pool for a refreshing swim and then the Tuesday night meeting. As I wrote this a Zambian and the nephew of Justin came (his name is David) and presented me with a birthday gift that he had bought me. It warmed my heart of his kindness for I know he has it hard but it was important to him to present me with a gift that I would like and of course, it was Coke.
David is a good kid, if in a little trouble. He is the kid I worked with by the ferry the day that Jim went to get the suitcases from Myuqua-Uqua. He has three children and a wife and is only seventeen. He never got past seventh grade and he works peace work much like his uncle did when the work is available from Mr. Bailey. His life is hard and in the back of his mind I think he thinks that I can somehow take him to America with me where he can live a better life.
Despite all this I got him what he wanted most when he was at the pontoon area with me and that was a waterproof watch. My father shipped some over in the parcel and I let him have his pick even before he picked mine and God blessed my generosity. I wanted a black one, and I thought about not presenting it because he might choose it, but I presented it anyway, he chose a different one, the one I actually wanted him to pick and still shows me how much he loves it today.
So David presented me back with a gift that would have been very expensive for him and I am quite touched and now head to the pool where I will be quite refreshed and then I will head to the meeting room to be quite socialized.
In the end I had a wonderful birthday starting back from the night before with a BBQ just for me and later tonight, at six o’clock when the power comes on with the emails I’m bound to get from those I love.
My spirits are definitely lifted and it has been a great birthday.
Carl.
There were complications directly after I left, three veins opened up and covered the doctors in blood. They got it under control but the lady has not spoken since. Pray for her recovery.