Hospitalization

And other happenings my first week back!

Hello again, and welcome to everyone who started reading this week! It sure was an unprecedented one, but now, Sunday afternoon, with some tropical rain coming down outside our bedroom window.

The first day of the build on Tuesday went excellently! We finished the concrete floor of the house a little after noon, and had the rest of the day free to walk around with the team. After a good night’s sleep, we were ready to go for Wednesday’s part of the build.

My husband and I had gone to run some errands in the truck, so we were about a twenty to thirty-minute drive away from the sight. We needed to drop some things off at the other Casas Por Christo build that was happening this week. As we were leaving the site, we got a call to come back to the first build as quickly as possible. One of the team members had an accident and possibly broke her arm.

On the drive back, I was praying that our path would be clear to get to them. There had been a truck sitting on the one-way road when we left, unloading sand, and if it, or a different vehicle, was there, it would cost us valuable minutes. We had no idea the extent of the emergency or who had gotten hurt.

God answered that prayer, though, and we made it all the way to them without incident. When we arrived, the team had already splinted her arm, and they were pretty sure that it was a broken wrist. We got her to the clinic, and the doctors confirmed that it was a wrist fracture. My husband did an awesome job, doing all of the translation, scheduling the appointments, and driving us everywhere. After scheduling the surgery for later that evening, we prepared everything and set out on the two-hour drive to the hospital.

Her surgery went well that night, and she was ready for discharge in the morning. Unluckly, I had started to experience some pain the night before, and it was much worse in the morning. All three of the ladies who were with us, including the one who had just been through surgery the night before, strongly encouraged me to stay and get treatment at the hospital instead of waiting until we were back home, like I was planning, and I’m glad they did. It was an aggressive infection.

After the first round of IV fluids and a few other medications, so they could check to make sure that the infection hadn’t spread, which thankfully, it had not, they started me on IV antibiotics and gave me a painkiller for the two-hour drive back. Also side note, they hang their IVs from carabiners in this particular hospital (see above).

The past few days have been R&R, along with spending a little time with the team, all of whom have been incredible to talk to, especially the three ladies with whom we were for those two days. I’ve also been taking IV antibiotics every single day since, and one of the ladies is a nurse, so she helped me the first night before they left back for the States. My husband and I also cleaned the bus before they left!

I’ve also been taking a lot of pictures of the different plants here! Right now, since it’s the rainy season, there are all of these trees with huge orange flowers on them called the African Tulip Tree (pictured in the middle and bottom right). It reminds me of the fall colors back in South Dakota, although now they have the first snow back there!

I’ve also been taking pictures of some of the different art I’ve seen and of the hotel that we stayed at, which already had its Christmas decor. One cafe had a “coffee table” and I also included our neighbor’s rooster.

That’s all for this week, hopefully next week we will see much less of the doctor, except for the medicine IVs I’ll need all next week too. There will be a team coming tomorrow, so my husband and I will be doing the final preparations for the team before they arrive. Blessings to you all, and I pray all is going well for you.