2007 April 10--Hospital

Well hi.

Yes, they changed P-day to today so that's why I'm writing you now as opposed to yesterday. The change was a bit sudden so as to take the missionaries by surprise, so all of the appointments planned for today and all of the appointments not planned for yesterday are chaos. And yet, life somehow goes on.
It was lovely to hear from you. I'm glad the Easter program went well, I'm sorry I didn't get to hear it. But it sounds like everyone's doing well, and keeping themselves busy. Thank you the Abe Knell family for your E-mail and for thinking of the missionaries, that's cool, Tohizo. Thank you mom for the Fasenjan recipe, it will be delicious, I'll have to try and find some celery here or just hope it's not that important.

OK then, on to it. This week was arguably one of the toughest weeks I've had up to this point. There are many contributing factors, and I'm afraid that I am still to close to it to see and understand things from a higher vantage point in retrospect. But I think that I've still got several more things to learn from this past week because it was jam-packed with information and introspection. I won't have too much time to explain but I'll see if I can divide things up in a semi-logical way:

Tuesday: My companion refuses to get out of bed and get ready and go to work. This leads to an "argument" (to put it lightly) and in a moment of neglect I say everything that I am thinking out loud (really "out and loud”) and in the process find that when I am angry, I'm am never at a loss for the right (or wrong I guess) cutting remarks to say, in English or any other language I decide to use. When my companion had been verbally destroyed in this onslaught of rhetoric rage and had no well-turned retort, all he could think to say was " GET THE F"""" OUT!!!!" which I did promptly (before I said anything to combat the stupidity of profanity). The Mission President, on the phone, informed me that we could take a day off if we needed it. I then called all of our appointments that had phones that we would not be coming that day. My companion stayed in bed shut in the room all day. I cleaned the house and read scriptures, and yes, I may or may not have been a little ticked. I didn't really sleep well that night

Wednesday: I woke up in the morning with a fever of 103 and but later that day we worked anyway( I waited until the fever had dropped before) because well, we'd already missed 6 appointments the day before and we needed to apologize to the one's without phones who were expecting us. We worked all day and NONE of our appointments went through.( 6 scheduled 8 back-up plans, and a lot of walking). I think that there was an apology somewhere in there as well, from both of us. On way home, I slipped stepped into a gutter, almost up to my knee. (67HA is the dirtiest place in Madagascar, and apparently the statistic is, Antananarivo is the 2nd dirtiest city in the world, 2nd to Mexico City, and I think only because it is smaller, so I don't think I need to describe what may have been in this gutter) I didn't sleep that great that night either

Thursday: Year mark on mission. I got up in the morning with an enormous headache. The fever was back, but not as high, I tried to rest for most of the day, and in the evening we went to our 3 scheduled appointments, they went through, it was amazing. The rest is kind of a blur because at this point my health kind of took a turn for the worst. I didn't sleep at all that night because the headache never let up once

Friday and Saturday: These two days are also kind of a blur. I remember my head hurting so bad it made me throw up. I was the most painful and relentless headache I've ever had. I couldn't even drink water to take painkillers because I would just throw it up 10 minutes later. I didn't sleep at all, and I threw up more in these 2 days than I have in my entire life. The weird thing was I was just my head that hurt. I went to the doctors on Saturday, but he didn't seem to get that I couldn't keep anything down, and didn't really listen to what I was saying, because he just prescribed a whole bunch of useless medication for my stomach because he thought I had the flu or something ( the doctor was about 23 and his girlfriend was waiting for him to finish when we got there.) The trip to the doctors via taxi was trying enough, but the trip back was mostly walking because there was no taxis, with a couple of detours so I could throw up again. After trying unsuccessfully to take the medication, I was a little bit at a loss.

Saturday night/ Sunday morning: Happy Easter: All the while, I had been keeping in contact with one of the senior missionary couples, mostly Sister Armor. Anyway, Saturday night, I called to report that the doctor trip had been kind of pointless. At this point we really needed to figure something out, because I hadn't had water in a couple of days and I was kind of thirsty. So, we decided to take me to a hospital and get hooked up to an IV or something. Since the AP's were picking up an Elder from Africa that night at the airport, they said that they should take me to the hospital when they were done. I just had to wait 2 hours was all. So I waited, they came, and we went to the hospital. The "hospital" ;((((at this point in the letter I would like to apologize for the negative contents of this letter, and give the disclaimer that I really do enjoy my mission,in fact, I love my mission and that I've been doing my best to spare you some of the more unpleasant experiences I've had, while at the same time trying to help you understand somewhat why and how I'm feeling right now.)))))) Ok then, the hospital; I'm afraid I don't have the time to adequately describe this place to you, but it was pretty crazy. I was put in what seemed kind of like a short wide hall way, sectioned off by little portable dividers, each with it's own hospital "bed". There were blood stains on the floor and the walls, medical garbage scattered all around, mosquitoes flying trough the open windows, there were spiders and spider webs covering the fluorescent shining above my head (they kept catching and eating the mosquitoes, which I felt was symbolic of something but I couldn't tell what), it was cold and they put me next to this Arabic woman who had either stabbed herself or had been stabbed ( her dad was there, and he spoke very broken English and no Malagasy, but could do the hand-motions) Nobody could speak English. Anyway, after getting there, and explaining to this woman "nurse/doctor?" that my head hurt really bad, an that I couldn't keep anything down, and particularly that I was dehydrated, the first thing she does is hand me a cup, and tells me to pee in it. When I tell her that I can’t, then she asks, " are you shy?" I was about to say something angry but I just stared at her with vehemence instead. Anyway, yeah, the rest of the night kind of went on that way with varying degrees of stupidity and frustration, somewhere in there, they pretty violently jammed an IV into my wrist, they also took an X ray for some reason, and a bunch of other pointless tests and they couldn't find anything wrong with me ( they even told me I had beautiful lungs. um... thanks) . Maybe two hours into it, all of the other patients were taken care of and taken away, and all of the "doctors" went to sleep. So we had to wake them up every time we needed something. ( Elder Lies, the AP was my faithful companion throughout this whole experience). Anyway, long story short, I didn't sleep at all, the "doctors" were very condescending the whole time and a few other negative descriptive words I could think of but probably shouldn't write. They were pretty upset when we told them at 5:10 that we wanted to leave because we felt that they weren't really doing anything for us but taking our money and that we had not been taken care of. They told us we couldn't leave, and almost ripped the IV out of my arm right then and there, but somehow restrained myself and we left at 7:23. The IV did help though. ( I knew it was clean because elder Lies had to go and buy everything himself from a pharmacy) , I went home and slept. It was bliss. I later learned that the AP's had been misinformed, and that they had actually taken me to the wrong hospital. hahahahahahahahaha. Life's hilarious sometimes isn't it?

So now I'm here, There is actually more long and tedious details to the previous story, but I think you get the picture. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that I feel a lot better now, and am expecting a full recovery. I'm still a little out of it, so I apologize if not all of this letter makes sense. Well, I love you, I hope you keep doing well. I pray for you always. I really hope this e-mail doesn't scare you (mom) too bad, because, again, the Lord is protecting me. I'm still not sure what to make of this last week, but rest assured I'm figuring something out. Ok then. Veloma! ( and Happy birthday Thomas on Sunday, I remembered at the hospital)
Elder Draper