Warning parts of this blog are not quite G-rated…
This month we are in Uganda!
We are partnering with Lightforce Ministries and have had the opportunity to serve in three different areas within the ministry here. Some of our group goes to a school and teaches PE, while others are doing practical work at the compound, this means helping to move dirt from the well they are digging, working in the gardens or other practical (aka manual labor) things. The group I was in is the community group, we are changing roles at the start of next week. The community group goes out into the community doing practical things to help people out. We haul water from the well, visit homes where the kids from the school live if they aren’t coming to school, play a game to teach financial planning, or we slash grass! There are other things as well like talking with people, being present for a Bible study that is completely in the local language, or even shucking beans from the pods. It has been an amazing ministry to be a part of and we never know what we are going to be doing! I love it!
Last week when we slashed grass for the first time, slashing grass is pretty much swinging a bent machete at the grass to cut it, we got grass and dirt and bugs all over us. We have gotten the technique down after a few days of it but that first day was rough! Afterward, I began to feel very itchy.
I warned in the beginning of this blog that it is not quite for all audiences, this is where that time begins. I am going to be open, honest, and vulnerable with you here… you’ve been warned.
So as I said, I began to feel VERY itchy. I was convinced a bug fell into my shirt and got stuck in my bra and then decided to bite me a bunch of times. A few days later I noticed the “bites” and thought they looked odd but assumed they must have been an ant because those things can hurt! Thankfully we have a nurse with us this month because after a day of going crazy from being itchy I had her look at the “bites” that I was beginning to think might have been a rash. She said they definitely did not look like normal bug bites and since we have a free clinic on site, I should go there in the morning.
The next day off I went and learned what a difference culture can be. I saw the nurse and she told me it was because I am wearing a bra… random fact: bras are not super common where we are. She also said it could be bug bites or from the heat or a different kind of rash and she sent me on my way with two kinds of antibiotics and some cream to apply to it. Emilie, my personal nurse this month, told me not to take the medicine but that I could use the cream.
By this point the rash was confirmed to be a rash because it did spread, it also began to hurt. I was so itchy but any kind of contact with my skin there hurt so much. It’s location, wrapping around my right side of my body on my lungs, made breathing hurt. It also appeared on my spine and would cause me to feel like I was having painful muscle spasms in my back randomly. That is when it hit me. This was probably shingles…
I mentioned the possibility to Emilie and she confirmed that all of the symptoms seemed about right. She checked one more time to see if it only stayed on one side of my body and that was a yes as well. So then I began the planning for a trip to a doctor’s office the next day.
That night was, well, awful. I slept maybe an hour from the pain. In the beginning of the month I thought my back was bothering me from the bed, I seriously had a miniature quarter-life-crisis moment of thinking “am I getting old to the point of my back hurting from a soft mattress?” That night I tried so many times to fall asleep. After a while I gave up and told God I was listening and He could tell me whatever He wanted. I tend to have many one-sided convos with God so this was the perfect chance for me to be quiet and listen. He decided to be quiet though and He did give me a time to talk and have a heart to heart with Him. At this point I was mad at Him. Of all of the times in my life why would shingles decide to show up now? I was not in a super stressful ministry, I was happy with the teams who are here, there were no added stressors to cause this to come out of nowhere. Why did it have to be Uganda? I still don’t know this answer but I have come to terms with this being something that God wants me to work through. I cried quite a lot that night, from frustration and from pain. I haven’t really had too many times in my adult life that something hurts so much I cried but this was one of them. I couldn’t breath without hurting, I couldn’t sit up without hurting, and I couldn’t lay down without hurting.
The next day I was tired but couldn’t quite think about that because I was still just on the struggle bus. I had a great Jesus time in the morning though so that helped me get into a decent mood. I have been growing this year on not allowing how I feel physically to hinder my joy or hinder my ministry so I needed that Jesus time! I have mostly been learning that through my allergies when they randomly get bad, but this was the real test for me!
I went to the doctor after breakfast and learned that all the symptoms point to shingles! They couldn’t technically diagnose me without sending me to a city 6 hours away so they just went off of the symptoms. Because of that the doctor wants to see me again on Tuesday so he can make sure everything was going okay.
Getting the diagnosis lead to the hopes I would get better right away, but I can tell you that was three days ago and I am still constantly fighting the urge to scratch and regularly taking pain killers to fight the pain.
This has definitely been the most difficult trial I have faced on the race so far and it’s not quite done yet. I was going to wait to write this so I could end it with all that I learned looking back at the shingles, but I don’t think that is being true to all of you. I could have written a blog only telling you only about ministry or what to pack for the World Race or something like that and saved this story for once it was all tied up with a pretty ribbon. But, like I said, I want to be open, honest, and vulnerable with all of you. I want my blog to be a place of honesty and it wouldn’t be honest if I was hiding the difficult parts of the race from you.
With all of that being said, several positive things have been revealed to me about my team through this though:
I am at least two years older than my entire team so they have all received the chicken-pox vaccine and are immune to shingles!
Being on an all girls team is beneficial when you get shingles where I did…
My team will carry me through the hard times!
They don’t mind when I cry and don’t think of me as weak for crying.
I love my team!!!
There is one more thing I re-learned, it’s the most important!
God is still with me in this and will work things out for my good!
