internet woes

I am actually connected to the internet for the first time in a long time! There have been plenty of adventures to share but due to technological difficulties I have been cut off from the world! I have been kicked off the internet about 9 times in the past hour! It's kind of like we live in West Africa or something!

Keep checking back....I will get something posted soon!

the rest of the story

Well, here I am finally getting around to posting something! Sorry I don't have any better pictures but after the first day of Kevin and his video camera I think I said something like "We're not at Disney World you know...you can put the camera away" and that pretty much ended the documentary.

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I'll try to give you the short version of the story. Two weeks ago (this very night as a matter of fact) I woke up around 1am in a lot of pain. I didn't want to wake Kevin up so I laid there for the next 2 hours hoping whatever it was would go away. I finally got out of bed, got dressed, woke Kevin up and told him that I had a really sharp pain in the upper right part of my stomach and that I was going to walk up to the guest house dining room to get online to see if I could "google" it to try and figure out what it might be.

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Now, perhaps I should stop here and explain to you why in the world I would go about things in that way. We live on a hospital compound. You cross your eyes and the people three houses over know about it in less than 32 seconds. So I figured I would be real embarrassed if I went to the hospital in the middle of the night and had them wake up the doctor on call only for him to get out of bed, come to the hospital, tell me to take 2 Tums and go back to bed.

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So anyway, I got online and googled "right upper belly pain." I found a sort of chart that listed symptoms on one side and possible causes on the other side. There were a couple of symptoms that I could identify with and both of them listed gallbladder as the possible cause. At the bottom of the page it said something like "persistent stomach pain should not be ignored."

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So I guess that was enough for me. I went back home, woke Kevin up again and told him that I was going to walk to the hospital. We got to the hospital just after 4am and by 5am had already had an ultrasound and been given a diagnosis, had been seen by the doctor on call who happens to be a pediatrician (how appropriate) and a surgeon who said that surgery was in my near future.

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They gave us the option of going home (to the US) or staying and having it done here. The difference is the fact that in the States they can remove gallbladders laparoscopically and here they have to do the big open incision and leave me with an abdominal scar that is sure to ruin my bikini modeling career.

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I don't think flying any distance is comfortable on a good day and I certainly could not imagine flying home in the amount of pain I was in. They told me they could train Kevin to give me a couple different kinds of injections during our travels if necessary and I think that's when I decided to stay here and live with the scar!

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So that's what happened. The end of the story is obvious being that I'm sitting here typing this. They did the surgery the next morning (Friday) and I was back in the comfort of my own home on Sunday afternoon. Only in Togo can you have surgery on Friday and walk back to your home on Sunday. The least they could have done is let me ride home on the tractor.

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I am truly thankful for all of your prayers and encouragement. I praise the Lord for a good and speedy recovery!

i'm alive...and well as a matter of fact

For those of you who may or may not be wondering where I have been...I decided last week (Friday June 27 to be exact) that I had carried my gallbladder around long enough and that it was high time for it to come out!

That's not exactly how it happened but that's the gist of the story. I'll get around to posting the details soon. I'm sure you can't wait....gallbladder stories were always among my favorites growing up.

Once upon a time there lived a mean ugly gallbladder......well, I'll tell you later.