Pain

So this lump in my armpit? HURTS. My family saw it today and they were like HEEEEEEEEY! And then they called it something in Bambara like “sumani” or something like that. I’ll have to ask Dr. Dawn if they were right. Also this antibiotic I’m taking gives me a stomachache, even when I take it with food. And my other ailments hurt, too. Everything hurts. It makes you grateful for those days when you just feel normal.

So I tried to button up my house pretty good today since I’m not sure if I’ll be zipping right back here or not. By button up I mean: water buckets empty, water filter empty, all dishes clean, no messes (especially edible ones), all travel bottles full, etc. It all depends on how things go at the dentist. I’m fairly sure that whatever it is, it can’t be taken care of in Bamako. Which means Dakar, or worse (better?), South Africa. I just hope that this dentist is good enough to identify the problem. Before it gets a lot worse. That’s been one of my experiences here. Doctors in general are not very good with preventative care or diagnosing something before it becomes a really big problem. They tend to wait until it is a really big obvious problem before they can either A. recognize it or B. care to do anything about it. My one exception would be Traian. But unfortunately he is out of my life now.

What I really hate about doctors (all doctors, not just the ones here) is that they don’t trust you to know what’s going on with your own body. Like, I know what’s normal about my body better than you do, you’ve been examining it for five minutes. This was especially evident the last time I was in Dakar, when it took a week to do a root canal because the dentist wasn’t hitting the nerve when he was giving me novocaine. I could tell I wasn’t numb before he even started doing anything. I could tell he hadn’t hit the nerve when he gave me the SHOT, for crying out loud. And he kept saying stuff like oh, it’s the nerve, it’s so inflamed, or there’s this swelling pressure or blah de blah blah blah. This happened multiple times. Like, multiple DAYS. And I just said to the APCMO (American), “dude, he’s not hitting the nerve. I’ve had enough novocaine shots in my life (like, hundreds) to know he isn’t hitting the nerve.” And the APCMO did the verbal equivalent of patting me on the shoulder and telling me to run along and play now. I was like, whatever dude. I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. If you keep messing it up until it gets REALLY bad, you’ll have to send me to America and then I can have some Mexican food. So swing away.

Anyway. I’m headed to the BKO tomorrow to take care of all this medical hubbub on Monday. Wish me luck.