In the morning I went on rounds with Dr. Kajesi in the hospital. There was another woman with a pleural effusion that needed to be drained. I got to drain it- I am becoming quite knowledgeable about them. In the afternoon, Jordan, Rick, Sue and I walked over to the primary school to watch a soccer game. It was a team from Chidamoyo playing another village's team. We arrived at 2:35 for a 2:30 game and no one was there. Typical Africa time. We walked around a group of school kids started following us because of our cameras. Then a truck zoomed up with a ton of people in the back blasting music and they all jumped out.
The teams started warming up and we asked which team was from Chidamoyo because the one person we knew on the team wasn't there yet (Tapson). Someone told us that it was the team in red. So the game started finally and more and more people kept coming to watch. The red team scored and we cheered. It was just about only us who cheered. It seemed very odd considering there were so many people there- wouldn't most of them be there for the home team? We kept asking people to make sure that the red team was ours but they didn't understand us. Finally Tapson got there and we asked him and he said the blue team was from Chidamoyo- it made so much more sense but we were all so embarrassed for having cheered for the wrong team. They ended up losing 1-0. There is another game tomorrow so hopefully they will win and we will now be supporting them! The game was really fun and it is quite a source of entertainment here- so many people came out for it. Everyone stands right on the lines- which are pretty difficult to distinguish so I'm not really sure where the field boundaries even are.
I had a great day- a good morning at the hospital and then it was really fun to go to the soccer game. That night however, I woke up scratching myself. I looked down at my legs because they felt really itchy and I had what looked like bug bites all over. I thought that maybe it was flea bites because Jordan and I had been playing with Dr. Kellert's new puppy right before we went to sleep. Then I realized that other places on my body were itching and I started looking and my arms and stomach were covered too. I started thinking that they looked too big to be flea bites and there were so many! I started putting Benedryl cream on like it was lotion but nothing seemed to be working. I looked at my bed and I didn't see any spiders or anything else there. I really didn't know what to do at this point. Everything itched so much, and I had no idea where they came from- was it safe to get back in my bed?
I decided that I had to wake Jordan up and see if she had any and then maybe I would know what I had. Jordan didn't have anything and agreed that they didn't look like flea bites. Also, there were so many that it didn't seem like something from my bed. She thought that they might be hives and that we should go see Dr. Kellert. She was still awake luckily because she had just come back from Harare. I showed her and she said that I needed to take Benedryl. Neither of us had any so she told me to get some from the hospital in the morning. By this point everything was itching so badly I knew it would be a horrible 6 hours.
Jordan and I walked up to the hospital and asked the nurse on the night shift for Benedryl. She didn't know what it was and we had to explain to her what hives were (typical with the nurses unfortunately). She said all that she could give me was a shot of hydrocortisone because the pharmacy was closed. I decided that since I didn't know much about that, I didn't really trust her to do it.
Jordan and I walked back down to the house and we ran into Major returning from Harare. He asked what we were doing walking around in the middle of the night and we told him. He said that I had to call Dr. Kajesi. I told Major that I didn't want to wake him up but he insisted. Jordan and I walked back up to the hospital and he met us there. I was really happy that I had called him after all because now the itching was spreading to my face and scalp. He got me some pills from the pharmacy and then said that I needed a drug IV and an injection. We went to the nurses station and I told him that I don't get IVs put in me- I only do it to patients! He laughed and said it won't be bad.... unless I miss. Which is a possibility because I'm not very good at it! I knew he was joking but he said it with such a straight face I almost doubted him. I did think it hurt and now I know what all of the patients go through. I definitely did not like being the patient! One of the nurses wanted to admit me and Dr. Kajesi said to put me next to the smelliest patient, I said thanks but no thanks.
I also got an injection in my arm and went home. Already I was starting to feel less itchy. When I was finally back in bed, then my arm started really hurting from the injection. It took another couple of hours for the pain to finally go away and I fell asleep.
Yesterday I slept almost the entire day because of the medicine. I am feeling much better today and the hives are almost all gone- only around my joints for some reason. I still do not know what caused it for sure- I was fine when I went to sleep. It might have been a tree I touched at the soccer game but I'm not sure.
This weekend I will be taking care of the Kajesi's new puppy while they are in Harare. I am thinking of it as kind of a trade off for waking him up in the middle of the night.
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