87% of normal and improving; that is an achievement to be at compared from about 38 hours ago. I could have sworn I was giving birth. Yes, I am completely aware that I am a man, and so much that science as told us this is not possible, for all I knew just over 2 days ago at around 2.30am, this is exactly what was happening, where was I supposed to find a midwife now? So happy birthday to my newborn and me! Just hours after I entered the 27th anniversary of the day of my birth and the previously sanctioned COS date (Close of Service) of my Peace Corps service I am sent writhing in pain behaving like a combination between a dog trying to find a proper position to sleep in and a fish caught out of water. As the sun rose without having an definable sleep, I lied in that bed feeling that there was something amiss about this past night. Obviously no baby birthing was to contribute to the night’s events, so I could only attribute the pain possibly to the consumption of ostrich, wildebeest, springbok and crocodile meat from the night before. As I felt somehow improved from the combination of feeling feverish and feeling like my insides were turning inside out I went back to work the next day with the assumption that all was A-OK! The walk to work was somehow laborious, I just felt tired and still was having some pain in my side, but wasn’t the same as the night’s. Happy birthday to me yeah?
Well finally I arrive at the office ready to finish my last paperwork to end my service officially but in the mean time my mind can not get off the residual pain throbbing from the night before. Moving around the office, trying to find people here and there became too much and I knew that it was time to see if I was just being crazy (did I pull some weird muscle) or was something really going on? Assuming it’s not someone attempting to tickle you, give you a massage or treat you like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, someone poking at your abdomen is just odd, but it can tell a lot. Well unfortunately I cannot tell you a lot. Blood work: unremarkable; negative, nothing out of the normal. Urine analysis: yellow (somehow concentrated), otherwise normal. Malaria test: negative. Liver Functionality Test: normal; normal, and normal. What is was the cause of the intense pain, general discomfort and lethargy, and fevers that have been going on? Today is my birthday and my last day of service and this is how I go out? I have things I need to do, people I need to see and places I need to go! A memorial for a friend who passed 2 years ago I am going to miss. The anniversary for priesthood for a friend of mine—I am going to miss. What if this continues? Are they going to evacuate me? We don’t even know what it is?
Though my entire body was aching and I was moving at a snails pace, I was surprised by the staff of the Peace Corps Office with a lunch and cake (though none of them had known at the time how I had been feeling). This was totally unexpected and was amazing to have been treated so well by these friends and colleagues of Peace Corps Uganda. If only I could have been a bit more animated I know that I could have shown my appreciation a bit more, but I hope they know how much that meant to me. After that I went back to lying down and soon I found that my birthday was going to end with what I believe to be my first IV. Maybe I have had one before but I have a memory like an 80-year Alzheimer’s patient. So after a liter of fluids were inserted directly in to my bloodstream I was on my way home, hoping and praying that this was the end, and maybe this was just a little food poisoning or something? So I did actually end the evening with a piece of lasagna out at a restaurant, but the night’s course of sleep consisted of feverish and sweaty sleep though waking feeling fairly refreshed on the 8th. Whew, that was brutal but look’s like there is light…
…Well that was a bit too soon to think that! Let me be short with this account even though the events here were arguable worse than the day’s prior. I thought things were good and I walked up some stairs and got halfway up and couldn’t catch my breath and my abdomen and back were in pain and I figured oh this is all okay and then I spoke on the phone while pacing for 5 minutes only to feel like I was running a marathon and breathing almost consciously and finally going back to the medical unit and being like oh yeah now something is wrong we have to figure this out and no this isn’t just me and no this isn’t just some muscle pull and something really is or has been going on inside of me and we need to go figure this out NOW! Blood work, malaria test, urine analysis, more Pillsbury Doughboy pushing, chest x-rays, ultrasound (nope, no baby)...I tried to walk up a hill but had to sit down. It was as if ‘pain/anguish’ had taken the form of some spirit and was squeezing me and sucking all of the air out of me! Someone wheel me up the hill those last 30 meters. Thank you so much, really, thank you, I couldn’t make it. It doesn’t make sense. I can sit there and chat with you—yes the pain is still there and it is laborious to breathe—but I can sit and chat as if it is a normal day. You want me to breathe, laugh, walk, turn, move and do all that and we have a problem…well NOW we have tested so many things and what, well we don’t really know? Could be a viral fever? Could be a kidney stone? Could be a combination of the two or something random and completely different and we just don’t know? Give me just one more night of a fever and sweating myself to sleep and now I’ve finally entered a beautiful pasture of hope and joy and delight and smiles and baby hippos and squirrels playing and endless snow cone and cotton candy machines! There is no intention to imply the use of psychotropic drug use, more to show the difference between how the past 2 days were in comparison to the here and now. I guess the best birthday gift I was given was relief from the past 2 days and it has come! So why don’t we let the next 363 days of year 27 pass without any stones? or other inexplicable pains and I thank Uganda for an amazing last 40 months of my life!
