Back in the Motherland

So almost two months ago I sprung my last minute vacations plans on you, and then haven’t written you a thing since. For those of you that are not in the greater Philadelphia area and don’t know what has been keeping me busy these past several weeks, I will enlighten you. Mostly eating really, a good dose of drinking (not binge drinking, more a nice cocktail or two everyday), and lots of movies. This probably explains why I gained 12 pounds during my stay (I’m sure everyone in village will be very pleased with that). And through it all, there was my doctor. I don’t think that I have ever had such concentrated doctor’s visits in my life. I decided to visit the family doctor just to get another opinion about the boil situation (two more sprung up shortly after I settled in even though I was on a course of antibiotics prescribed by a Malian doctor just a day before I left). He prescribed a new antibiotic, and within day I saw rapid improvement. For any boil sufferers out there that are reading this, I have one word for you: Bactrim. It is a lifesaver. So that was a fantastic start to the trip. But unfortunately while I was there, he took immediate notice of a small, lumpy bump on my arm that had been my constant companion for several months. He said he wanted to biopsy it, and that started a long chain of events that kept me stateside well past my scheduled return date. Ultimately everything worked out fine, but there were some interesting twists and turns along the way. The first was the phone call that I received while spending time at the New Jersey shore with my mom and sister and her children. I get a call from my doctor saying that I need to come back to West Chester immediately for a tissue culture. Immediately, immediately? Immediately. The initial biopsy results showed that I most likely had subcutaneous tuberculosis. Who knew there was such a thing? He also told me that anyone that I had been around since coming home needed to be tested for Tb as well (he is saying this as I am looking at my 9 month old niece). So my mom was sweet enough to shuttle me up to the doctor’s office, get the tissue culture done, run that to the hospital, and drive right back to the shore without skipping a beat. It was pretty impressive really – I think it was a 5 hour round trip. He also gave me a Tb skin test, which luckily showed nothing, so I felt pretty good within a couple of days that I was Tb free. When I called the doctor with the happy news, he dejectedly offered up that now he was completely confounded, and the most likely diagnosis at this point was leprosy. You can imagine my elation – Thank God it’s not Tb, it’s leprosy. So he recommended more tests, which I underwent upon my return from the shore, and none of them came up with anything conclusive. The time was drawing near for me to fly back to Mali, so we needed to make a decision about our course of action. We both agreed that the best thing to do was to cut out the infected area completely, stitch me up, and send me back to Mali to wait for the final tissue culture results (which won’t be ready for another month or so). So that is what we did. I have a nice little scar on my arm and no real explanation for what the problem was. After conferring with a dermatologist from the hospital, my doctor suggested that it was most likely a reaction to an unusual bug bite. And the surgery bought me another week and a half in the US. So I ended up spending over a month with my family, which was a nice bonus, but I was ready to come back. And despite a couple days of wondering if I was indeed ready to be back, I have decided that I am. I am looking forward to my last 8 months here, finishing my project in village, and seeing where this adventure leads me next. I have not been back to village yet (I catch a bus this afternoon), and I am very excited and a bit anxious about the reunion. I’ve spoken to my homologue since my return, and he told me that the village assumes I am not coming back. So it might be a bit of a shock for everyone today when I show up. I hope that no one has moved into my house already. My homologue, Vieux, also said that my cat is alive and well, and that he had taken on the responsibility for feeding Kitten McNugget in my absence until the morning that he absconded with all of Vieux’s meat that he had bought for the day. At least I know he is well fed.

I will be back in email contact in just a few short weeks, since I will be returning to Bamako the week of the 24th to pick up the latest adventurous soul who has generously agreed to visit me, Lisa. So I apologize for the long delay in communication (who would think that I would do a worse job of posting blogs while I was in the states?), but I am sure that I will have lots to report over the next few weeks as I settle back into Malian life. I am so pleased that I had the chance to catch up with so many people while I was home. It was a real treat, and I am very happy that I went. It was just the break I needed to refresh and re-energize before my final months here. It’s crazy right? Technically my service is officially over March 25th, 2007. When did that suddenly become only a few months away? I have a little leeway, and I can extend by a month or two if the well project is not quite done by then, but man, is that soon. It will hardly feel like I have left from this vacation before I will be coming back for good.