ANOTHER HEALTH UPDATE

From Norton: Okay, so I spoke too soon. Literally, I posted the last update on Saturday around noon, began walking home from my school and started feeling horrible again. I was coughing like crazy (felt like I was going to keel over in some coffee bushes on several occasions) and by Saturday night my fever was back up to 103.2. My head, jaw, and throat felt like they were going to explode from the pain and coughing. We knew I had to see a doctor. It was probably something serious. Someone said Dengue fever and that made us worried.

Doctors are notoriously bad in this region. Americans are told to stay away from them. In fact, before we came, one family who had stayed in our village for six months last year told us to bring our own suture kit because when their son needed stitches and they went to the local clinic, the staff didn't even have any sutures, needles, etc. There is only one real hospital in the area across the lake and up the mountain in a town called Solola and it has a really bad reputation. Westerners are urged to avoid it at all costs. Remember that fact. Bottom line: if you really need a doctor or any kind of medical attention, you need to go to Antigua or Guatemala City 4 hours away.

Before making a long trip to Antigua, we asked an American friend who runs a local humanitarian organization and has lived nearby for a few years if she knew of a local doctor that was good. She did...his name was Francisco and he was in our village and he was familiar with Westerners! Awesome! But unfortunately it was Saturday night at 7 pm and he wasn't available until Monday. Cata (the woman we are staying with) said she would call her doctor to come see me--her doctor works at the hospital in Solola and would come by after work around 8 or 9 pm. Ugh, against all the advice we had received, this is where we just had to trust Cata and trust God was taking care of us. I was getting worse by the hour and we decided to take whatever help we could.

The doctor Miguel arrived about 9 pm. He was wonderful. I told him my symptoms in broken Spanish and he agreed that he didn't think it was just the flu. He took my blood pressure, listened to me breathing (and coughing) and then looked down my throat, after which he immediately said I had an infection in my tonsils, or tonsillitis (or some other kind of infection and my tonsils were inflamed). At first it was puzzling. Then I was a bit scared because I thought that most people that had tonsillitis had to have their tonsils taken out and I certainly did not want to do that in Guatemala. But then it started to make sense. My throat wasn't sore in the typical "sore throat" kind of way, but it was painful and tonsillitus explained many of the symptoms. And after looking down my throat, he seemed pretty darn sure. He prescribed an antibiotic and said it should clear up the infection in a few days; he also prescribed a liquid specifically for the pain/inflammation in my throat. He was so nice. When I asked him how much we could pay him (you just pay doctors on the spot in Guatemala), he said not to worry about it. Turns out he isn't just Cata's doctor, but a cousin of hers and he wanted to do a favor. So Janis gave him a bag of chocolates instead.

The pharmacy was still open so Janis, Aubren, and Nancy went down there, got the medicine and I started taking it Saturday night.

So...now it's Tuesday around 1 pm. I've been taking drugs for 3 full days and honestly, I haven't felt a lot better yet. Just today, I'm getting a little bit of energy back and coughing a little less and getting around a little more and we're hoping that the antibiotics are now having their full effect and I'll feel a lot better in the next few days. Thanks for praying for us. We do have other updates about more "positive" things. We'll post those soon.