I am home. I left Togo on Thursday
night and arrived home early Saturday morning. At this point, I have
no plans to rejoin the squad. The Race is over for me. I’m sorry not
to have let anyone know, it happened pretty quickly.
The story: (just the thought of
recounting the past month makes me tired, so I’ll try to keep this
short. I tried not to say much about having Malaria because I didn’t
want anyone to hear the “M” word and get worried. Lots of people get Malaria, get treated and are perfectly fine. It just didn’t seem to work out like that in my case.)
I got sick with Malaria at the end
of March in Ghana. Got treated, felt better, for a few days. Got sick
again (as did a teammate), we were both retreated, both got better.
The second time around, my “better” wasn’t actually better, but I
just figured my body had been through a lot and was just needing more
time to recover. However, a few days after that I got sick again. I
stayed behind in the capital, Lome, while my team headed to a village
an hour away. Made my first visit to a Togolaise clinic. Received a
prescription for something that would give me an appetite and a
multi-vitamin (not exactly what I needed). Spent a few more days in
Lome and finally decided I was feeling well enough to rejoin my team.
Headed out to the village and spent the next two weeks more or less
laying on the couch. Visited a few more clinics without much luck (although I did get “diagnosed” with diabetes at one! Yeah, I don’t have diabetes). I never got really sick, so I hoped that maybe my body was just
needing a lot of recovery time.
On April 20th, I got sick
again, fever, exhaustion, muscle aches, started having a little
trouble breathing, decided I absolutely needed to find a good doctor.
Tried another clinic, got really excited about the fact that they
didn’t do anything dangerous and actually ran some tests! Returned
the next day to pick up test results. Ended up having an episode in
the waiting room where I was having trouble breathing. Got admitted
to the hospital. My tests came back showing that everything looked
okay. However, I clearly wasn’t better. Spent five days in the
hospital, the third night I realized that my chart showed I was being
treated for stomach parasites rather than malaria (which explained a
lot about why no one seemed that interested in treating me, had a
talk with the doctor, “Of course she has stomach parasites! We’re
world racers, I couldn’t care less about her stomach!” – My awesome
team leader, Christina, who stayed with me in the hospital and used
her ER nursing skills to protect me). Finally, they started taking my
lungs seriously and gave me a bronchodilator and then discharged me.
All they were really interested in was treating my individual
symptoms and not finding out why I still hadn’t fully recovered from
Malaria and I was feeling pretty good, so we went with it. That was Monday. At this point, I had no intentions of coming home. We
were supposed to head to Nigeria on Wednesday morning and I was more
than willing (and felt I was in good enough health) to give Nigerian
healthcare a shot. However, after I talked with my travel insurance
on Monday afternoon, I was informed that now that I had been admitted
and then discharged from the hospital for Malaria, no other
malaria-related medical expenses would be covered. So, the situation
was basically that I was in Africa, still not better, with no real
insurance. Logically, I was out of options, I had to come home. I
prayed a lot about it and God gave me overwhelming peace that it was,
in fact, time to come home.
Tuesday morning the official decision
was made. I spent all day Tuesday, trying to get things figured out
re: getting home and paying my hospital bills. I didn’t even get to
tell my team I was leaving until around 8pm Tuesday night. Early
Wednesday morning, I said good-bye to the other teams in Lome and
they headed to Nigeria. Three squadmates stayed in Lome with me , finishing up with hospital stuff and getting ready to come
home. Flew out of Togo on Thursday night and arrived in Truro early
on Saturday morning.
So, I’m home. I’ve already had some
tests run in Halifax and they looked good. I have an appointment this
week with a specialist in Halifax and so things should start getting
figured out soon.
I’ll post more about being home and how
I’m doing health-wise but for now, this is all I’ve got. I can’t wait
to see everyone and catch up, but please be aware that the last week
or two has been a lot for me and I haven’t had a chance to process
being home and what that means. It’ll be a few days before I’m ready
to jump back into life in Canada, both health-wise and emotionally.
