Medical Mixups

This is Elsie Jayne and Lucy Mae, last Sunday evening painting with Uncle Dawama James.
He is an artist and was enjoying showing the girls some things.

Today, we didn't get to have quite the adventure of last week.
Billy is in Nebbi for church. He left around 8 and won't reach back until dark it looks like at this point. I had some stomach virus on Friday and Saturday so we opted to not go with him this Sunday.

After Elsie Jayne led us in the music and prayer part of our family service and we had enjoyed painting pictures again on the porch...she started to look really pale. Sure enough she soon had fever.

Most likely it's just a virus, since we came from that season in America, but we are here now and have been long enough, I had to take her to get tested for malaria.  We are no longer in the mecca of medical care that Lexington, KY has been to us...welcome back to Arua!!!

We called a guy who drives a motorcycle taxi and has taken me to town a few times since we have been back. He was in another part of town, "picking meat for someone" he tells me!

So, I call a friend to get another number. Her boda boda driver comes and Elsie Jayne gets to ride for her first time in her memory!!!  WHAT JOY AND DELIGHT to a four year old. True terror for her mom!  But the girl is clearly sick, so we need to sort out why.

Off we go to the clinic, only my idea of where we were going and the drivers were two different realities. Thankfully everywhere in town they do malaria testing and it's more common to get a false positive than a false negative (i think). So...we get to the clinic of our driver's choice!

We go in, tell the receptionist why we have come and he tells us to wait. We wait. We wait a bit more and then...we wait.  Elsie Jayne is getting more and more worked up because she knows what is coming. She remembers getting malaria tests. No fun.

They call us back.  Even though we waited, we still are moved in front of about four people sicker and definitely there first...but we look unique, so we get bumped up.  Still a hard reality every time, but even though we refuse, they all agree, we must go!  So, we go back and get the dreaded finger prick.

Then we wait some more...about 20 minutes that is really an hour...finally it's our turn again.

The result...no malaria.

The doctor comes in and says he recommends we treat her for malaria anyway.
So...we buy the medicine and get back on our boda to come home.  We'll wait and see how she's doing tomorrow before we treat something that was said to not be there...but we just wanted to ask you all to pray for healing and for grace for "medical" realities in Arua.

So thankful for Dr. Wilkes while we were in the States!