01.10.04
(A.M.)
When you live in a place with four seasons, October is a pivotal month. It is a month of ushering, in and out: in with steaming meals and out with chilled ones; in with sweaters, out with sandals; out with cotton blankets, in with the down comfortor; in with leaf piles, and out with old tomato stalks, the lettuce heads you left to go to seed, white mildewed squash leaves.
In Ethiopia, to celebrate the beginning of a transition month, we brought in four almost-ripe mangos and brought out our blanket to hang on the line in the sun. Both of us have itchy red spots on our bodies and can’t decide whether we have bedbugs or scabies. Nasty, either way.
I finished reading Surprised By Joy by C. S. Lewis today. I was also surprised, not by joy, but by how non-compelling it was. Why do people love C. S. Lewis? Andy said when he read Mere Christianity, he loved it. He observed at the Community Health Center for a bit this morning. He said about it,
"Today I didn't have to go to one of the villages so I spent the morning in the health center. They use a WHO program called the Integrated Management of Childhood Ilness. It is meant for first level providers and simplifies treatment into a few different categories--malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, mental status change. I was observing nurses. At one point they had a 9 month with vomiting for three days soon after any PO and no stool. The child looked ok and didn't have bilious emesis. They didn't know what to do and asked if I could examine him. Did you ever see "Catch Me If You Can?" That is how I felt. All these nursing students gathered around as I palpated the belly and did a rectal with some ORS solution on the tip of my finger. The belly wasn't tender but it was distended. It was humbling that the only thoughts I had were fancy tests. I referred the child for an abominal film."
He also said, "I felt like a total imposter, but I think they were satisfied because I did a rectal exam on the child." That’s the man I married.
(P.M.)
Had our first "medical emergency" this evening. I found a little hard black lump on my skin. I called Andy over to come look at it, and he first pulled out the headlamp, then his fancy otoscope you stick in people’s ears to look at them, and had a close look. He said, "Looks like a tick. I think I can get it out." I was quite disturbed. Believe it or not, for all the time I’ve spent camping the only time I’d ever seen a tick before was on a dog’s eyebrow and it was the size of a marble. Fortunately, one of us, him, remained calm: he pulled out the tweezers, lit one of the candles, and heated them up. Maybe this is common knowledge, but to remove a tick, you’re not supposed to just pull it out--they stuff their little head hard and deep into your skin, screwing themselves in so only they can screw themselves out when they’ve a mind to. A tick will get a mind to when you give its backside a taste of fire. If you just pull, they’ll leave their heads behind. In my behind, for instance. (Take home message: always travel with a loved one. What if I’d come with coworkers? Ugly, ugly situation.)
I was a little unsettled by the whole thing--an insect nursing blood from me and my husband advancing towards tender parts with burning hot, needle-sharp tweezers. Whenever I anticipate something horrible or painful going to happen, I try to distract myself with thoughts of how this is good preparation for natural childbirth, just training myself to deal with discomfort. That’s how I distracted myself tonight, and also by telling Andy what I imagined would happen next week when Martin and Becca (and Edie, Soren, and Daffodil) and Heidi and Todd (and Sam, Mag, Lil, and Ella) all arrive in Provo.
"They’ll all be in the kitchen doing art projects in the afternoon," (Andy has the tweezers in the candle), "and Dad will make a roast and they’ll eat it in the backyard," (Andy is now advancing with hot tweezers, a concentrating look on his face, while my monologue goes a notch faster and a pitch higher,) "and they’ll be kissing and squeezing those new babies and watching slides together and taking hikes in the canyon and down by the lake and going to see the new house . . ." After a while, Andy says, "I think it’s dead."
"How do you know?"
"Because it moved at first, and now it’s not moving anymore." This actually makes me feel a little better. A dead bug stuck in my skin is much better than a live one. He decides to try working it out, and little by little gets it. He shines his light on his palm where he’s put it to inspect if the head is still on or not. There are six legs and two more little pointy things coming from one end, so we assume they’re antennae and the head is intact. I have, by this point, collected myself and am interested in inspecting the thing.
It’s tiny, the size of a sesame seed. Truth is, I’m a scaredy cat.
An alcohol swab, a little bath, and a mutual tick inspection, and the threatning entomological world has dwindled back to its original, vast but impersonal, size.
Now we just need to figure out what these red spots are.
When you live in a place with four seasons, October is a pivotal month. It is a month of ushering, in and out: in with steaming meals and out with chilled ones; in with sweaters, out with sandals; out with cotton blankets, in with the down comfortor; in with leaf piles, and out with old tomato stalks, the lettuce heads you left to go to seed, white mildewed squash leaves.
In Ethiopia, to celebrate the beginning of a transition month, we brought in four almost-ripe mangos and brought out our blanket to hang on the line in the sun. Both of us have itchy red spots on our bodies and can’t decide whether we have bedbugs or scabies. Nasty, either way.
I finished reading Surprised By Joy by C. S. Lewis today. I was also surprised, not by joy, but by how non-compelling it was. Why do people love C. S. Lewis? Andy said when he read Mere Christianity, he loved it. He observed at the Community Health Center for a bit this morning. He said about it,
"Today I didn't have to go to one of the villages so I spent the morning in the health center. They use a WHO program called the Integrated Management of Childhood Ilness. It is meant for first level providers and simplifies treatment into a few different categories--malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, mental status change. I was observing nurses. At one point they had a 9 month with vomiting for three days soon after any PO and no stool. The child looked ok and didn't have bilious emesis. They didn't know what to do and asked if I could examine him. Did you ever see "Catch Me If You Can?" That is how I felt. All these nursing students gathered around as I palpated the belly and did a rectal with some ORS solution on the tip of my finger. The belly wasn't tender but it was distended. It was humbling that the only thoughts I had were fancy tests. I referred the child for an abominal film."
He also said, "I felt like a total imposter, but I think they were satisfied because I did a rectal exam on the child." That’s the man I married.
(P.M.)
Had our first "medical emergency" this evening. I found a little hard black lump on my skin. I called Andy over to come look at it, and he first pulled out the headlamp, then his fancy otoscope you stick in people’s ears to look at them, and had a close look. He said, "Looks like a tick. I think I can get it out." I was quite disturbed. Believe it or not, for all the time I’ve spent camping the only time I’d ever seen a tick before was on a dog’s eyebrow and it was the size of a marble. Fortunately, one of us, him, remained calm: he pulled out the tweezers, lit one of the candles, and heated them up. Maybe this is common knowledge, but to remove a tick, you’re not supposed to just pull it out--they stuff their little head hard and deep into your skin, screwing themselves in so only they can screw themselves out when they’ve a mind to. A tick will get a mind to when you give its backside a taste of fire. If you just pull, they’ll leave their heads behind. In my behind, for instance. (Take home message: always travel with a loved one. What if I’d come with coworkers? Ugly, ugly situation.)
I was a little unsettled by the whole thing--an insect nursing blood from me and my husband advancing towards tender parts with burning hot, needle-sharp tweezers. Whenever I anticipate something horrible or painful going to happen, I try to distract myself with thoughts of how this is good preparation for natural childbirth, just training myself to deal with discomfort. That’s how I distracted myself tonight, and also by telling Andy what I imagined would happen next week when Martin and Becca (and Edie, Soren, and Daffodil) and Heidi and Todd (and Sam, Mag, Lil, and Ella) all arrive in Provo.
"They’ll all be in the kitchen doing art projects in the afternoon," (Andy has the tweezers in the candle), "and Dad will make a roast and they’ll eat it in the backyard," (Andy is now advancing with hot tweezers, a concentrating look on his face, while my monologue goes a notch faster and a pitch higher,) "and they’ll be kissing and squeezing those new babies and watching slides together and taking hikes in the canyon and down by the lake and going to see the new house . . ." After a while, Andy says, "I think it’s dead."
"How do you know?"
"Because it moved at first, and now it’s not moving anymore." This actually makes me feel a little better. A dead bug stuck in my skin is much better than a live one. He decides to try working it out, and little by little gets it. He shines his light on his palm where he’s put it to inspect if the head is still on or not. There are six legs and two more little pointy things coming from one end, so we assume they’re antennae and the head is intact. I have, by this point, collected myself and am interested in inspecting the thing.
It’s tiny, the size of a sesame seed. Truth is, I’m a scaredy cat.
An alcohol swab, a little bath, and a mutual tick inspection, and the threatning entomological world has dwindled back to its original, vast but impersonal, size.
Now we just need to figure out what these red spots are.
posted by Johanna Buchert Smith at 7:33 AM
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