The sickness

So what do you do when you get a phone call from your team leader while you are running errands telling you that one of your students needs to be taken to the hospital and you need to come get him right away? Remain calm, is my theory. And go get the student right away. That is what happened last Tuesday afternoon while I was at the bank. The funny thing was that it was fairly easy to remain calm because the symptoms relayed to me about this student's condition were: "he feels weak." Um, I don't know about anyone else, but I have felt weak before and it did not equal a trip to the hospital. So anyway, we hurried back to the base, where Chad, the student in question, was looking worse than weak. Apparently he had thrown up like 8 times in the last few minutes and all of his muscles started spasming, and he could barely talk. Kind of alarming, really.

So... 5 hours and a THOUSAND DOLLARS later (thank God for insurance!), Chad had been given who even knew how many units of antibiotics and pain killers and sedatives and at least 3 liters of fluid, and was on and off of an oxygen mask, and had x-rays, and all kinds of other things while I sat there and prayed. The murky verdict at the end of all of this was that he had food poisoning, or maybe a virus, or maybe some other bacteria. And the puking caused some kind of electrolyte imbalance which led to an anxiety attack, possibly. He was not better, but we took him to our friend Carrie's house. She's a nurse, plus has air conditioning and hot water, so it seemed like the best option. The next morning I did not feel good, and neither did two other girls on the team, so we headed over to Carrie's, too, and Carrie also didn't feel well. Our best guess is that we were somehow infected at the waterfall Carrie took us to Monday that week. Anyway, none of the rest of us were as bad off as Chad-- we made sure to drink as much as possible-- so we were able to get back to the base the next day. It's been a week of doing a little bit of stuff and then taking time out to rest. Being sick is terrible, and makes me feel useless. On the other hand, it's a good chance to ponder why we react to things in certain ways: why does my not being able to really contribute to what's going on for a couple of days make me feel so bad? Where is my worth really found? Oh, ponderings.

Anyway, we're all feeling better (most of the time) now, and are headed off to help out at a chapel this morning, so I'd better go!