The Copeland Ramblings/

Kidney Stones

Norm woke me up Wednesday morning saying that something was wrong. I jolted awake… which is far from normal at 6 am. He told me he was having some really horrible pains in his stomach. He asked me if I wouldn’t mind getting the kids off to school by myself this morning. Obviously I didn’t mind. But I was more concerned for him. I started quizzing him. Where is the pain? When did it start? What kind of pain? My first thought was to look up the symptoms online. But we had no power all night and it was still out. So… now what? First thing I thought was to call my parents. They have had a lot of experience with medical things like this. I called and thanks to the time difference they hadn’t gone to bed yet. They told me to get him to a doctor. One thing I remember clearly is telling them that his pain was so bad that he probably wouldn’t notice if I cut his arm off… maybe exaggerating… but not by much. So I told them I would talk to our neighbor, Debby. Who is a nurse. I went ahead and got the kids ready for school. We went downstairs and waited for the bus. 10 minutes seemed like 3 hours. I got the kids off and I RAN back to the house. I checked in to see if he was still alive. Haha. Then knocked on our neighbors door. Luckily they are early risers. I told them something was wrong with Norm and to come over. They quickly came over and Debby started asking Norm some questions. He would respond between moans and between bouts of puking. She said we needed to call the SOS medical. This is such an awesome thing we have here in Dakar. We don’t really have ERs so we call the SOS and they send a doctor to your door. We waited for what seemed an eternity. I tried to pack a bag for the hospital… just in case they sent us there. Norm kept puking from the pain. I have never seen anything like it. He couldn’t even speak the pain was so bad.

Finally the doctor arrived. Norm was in the bathroom puking so he took a seat and waited. I hurried Norm into the living room. The doctor began asking basic questions. He could see the visible pain Norm was feeling. So he said we would hook him up to an IV and get some pain meds and an anti spasmodic or anti inflammatory… I can’t remember. Norm was begging for relief. We were so happy to be giving him meds. After about 5 minutes the pain wasn’t going away. So the doctor called the ambulance. I called my mom again to tell her we were going to the hospital. She asked if I was ok. I nearly lost it. Was I ok? I was pretty freaked out. I was in agony for my love. It was so great to hear her reassuring voice. Thank you God for phones! About 5 or 10 minutes before the ambulance came Norm pretty much passed out. I think the meds started to work a bit… enough that he was no longer lucid. I think it freaked out the doctor a bit. He seemed a little nervous. But I was so so so relieved for Norm. He was no longer writhing in pain. The paramedics or at least the ambulance drivers showed up and they put Norm in a fold up wheel chair. They carried him downstairs and put him on the gurney that was in the van/ambulance. We all piled in the ambulance. Debby and I had to sit in the front. It was so hard to leave his side. But it was a good time for me to get myself together. I called our friend/housekeeper Suzanne to see if she would be willing to come in the afternoon to watch the kids. It was her day off. She said OF COURSE and we are praying for you. She called around to all of our church friends and got them praying.

Arriving at the hospital

Once we arrived at the hospital we waited for them to assign a room. Norm said his pain was mostly gone and he was in and out of sleep. I signed Norm in at the registration. They took us up to his room and I nearly fell over. It looked like a nice hospital room. I was honestly expecting something… well… African. Its all I had experienced here in Africa so far. But this… this was nice. TV, air, small refrigerator, private bathroom. I was so relieved.

Norm resting in his room

Doctors or nurses came in and out. Giving him meds… who knows what they were giving them. Here in Africa… patients don’t need to know what they are being given… its not really their right. If I asked they would tell me. But its not normal procedure. Then Norm started to come to a bit more. I found out he had been given morphine in the ambulance. The SOS doctor took me downstairs so that I could pay him for his services, the ambulance and for all the meds and supplies he had used. It came out to a grand total of 100,000 CFA. Which is roughly $240. NOT BAD!

After that we took Norm down to see the doctor at the hospital. Bill, Debby’s husband came with me. They have been here in Senegal for about 20 years. They knew all of the details of going to the hospital and Bill is much more fluent in French than me. It was so comforting having them there with us.

The doctor did an ultrasound. They were trying to figure out if he had a twisted bowel or kidney stones. I was watching the ultra sound machine very closely. I am very familiar with kidney ultrasounds from when I was pregnant with Canaan. It looked to me that there was a stone in the kidney and a stone in the bladder… which would be the one that had been causing the pain this morning. The doc wanted to confirm with a cat scan. The cat scan was really nice and it was so wonderful seeing local Senegalese people with such a high skill. Most doctors and things like this are not Senegalese people.

The scan confirmed the two stones. WHAT A HUGE RELIEF! Not emergency surgery. Now we had a waiting game. Is the second going to come out? Is it going to stay? The doctor wanted Norm to stay at the hospital for 2 nights to see if anything would happen or not. The doctor said that if it didn’t come out he would want Norm to have surgery to get it removed. They don’t have the need equipment and skills here in Dakar to blast the stone or break it up. The only real option would be surgery. We told him we are headed to the states for a wedding and he said we should try to get it taken care of there if possible. So we waited for two days. It was boring for Norm… he would throw up from time to time from the different meds he was on. I would get up and send the kids off to school, head to the hospital by taxi, hang out there until 4 or 5 and head home each day to be with the kids and get them dinner and into bed. It was a busy few days for me heading back and forth by taxi and looking after everything. But we are so blessed by our “family” here in Senegal. We have our Senegalese family and our mission family. And they were both taking care of us.

Friday the doctor released Norm. We are now in talks with the medical insurance to see if they will pay to have the procedure done in the states. If not we will have to wait around for it to come or have surgery. Norm is pretty nervous to be flying so much this summer. So we are truly praying that it will make its appearance soon or that we can have it blasted first thing in California. Please be praying with us for that. Norm is still feeling exhausted and not 100%. But we have been resting at home and enjoying being under one roof again.

We have truly seen the power of God through all of this. Everything was so perfectly planned and scheduled by him. I was supposed to have my language evaluation on Thursday (the day after this all started). But I had decided I really wanted to get it over with and did it on Monday. Praise God! We really didn’t have much that HAD to be done in the last few days. It was the first few days that were fairly calm in a LONG time. Just so happens God had cleared our schedules in advance because he KNEW that we had something already on the schedule that would take all of our time.

The view from the roof of the hospital.

Thank you so much for your prayers, encouragement and calls. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful support group and such a HUGE God on our side!

On this day..

• Makeshift Raincoat - 2008
• Auntie Christy is here!! - 2006
• Canaan and Gwen - 2006