Kidney Stone Update
After a lot of running around, going to the hospital, going to the doctor, attempting to arrange insurance, getting x-rays and a lot of time in the car… Norm has finally had the kidney stone removal procedure. PRAISE THE LORD. We really were not sure if it would be possible in two weeks time. But after only one week, its all taken care of. All that is left is one follow up with the urologist.
Today was the actual procedure. We drove about 45 minutes away to an out patient clinic. We checked in, filled out all the papers. Then after a little while a nurse came and took Norm to be prepped for the “surgery.” He had to be put out by general anesthesia. I was lucky enough to then have a few hours to sit and relax. I read, looked through magazines (in ENGLISH!!) and played games on our ipad. Usually after the procedure patients take 30 minutes in recovery to “wake up.” But they tried waking him up and he was tooooo sleepy. So they let him rest longer. After about one and a half hours he was finally ready to go home. We loaded up in our car, he was so very dopey and sleepy. We drove home. He slept most of the way. Once we were home he went straight to bed for about 2 hours. Ever since then he has been doing really well. Some mild pain but doing really well. Feel so wonderful having that taken care of.
Thank you for all of your prayers! Please continue to pray that he would recover well and not have any further problems. God is so good! He has taught us so many things through all of this. It has been hard physically and in so many other ways. But we are so thankful for a God who loves us so much to take us through things to teach us and mature us even more. He gives us many opportunities to put our faith to work. Thank you God!
Geocaching
We knew we would just have to fit some geocaching in while here in California. Its our most favorite hobby in the whole world. And there is not much of a geocaching scene in Senegal. Today, Dad, Canaan, Erik, Critter, Norm and I went for a nice geocaching hike. It was so beautiful, the weather was perfect and the caches were great! Here are some fun pics from our afternoon!
Arrived safe and sound!
Well we are here in California! Feels so strange being home after over a year! Yet it feels so comfortable and normal! Our trip was long and exhausting! But it went smoothly! Our travel total time ended up at 31 hours. When we arrived at the airport we waited at customs for a very long time, but when we came out to see my family we were sooooo overjoyed and so excited to see them. My whole family showed up! It was so awesome. It felt so surreal to actually be hugging my family and laughing with them in person. I still can’t get over it!
We’ve been busy since we got here. This is what we have done so far:
Flew in and went home.
Ate In n Out!!!
Washed and DRIED our laundry!!! (Nothing like fresh out of the dryer… oh ya!)
Had a rough night with Emmaus who is struggling big time with jet lag.
Ate YUUMMMMMMY bagel, cream cheese and bacon for breakfast.
Had amazing sandwiches with incredible lettuce and american bread and CHEESE!
Shopped at TARGET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ate Olas Mexican burritos.
Spent time with family.
Fell asleep while watching TV.
Go to the doctors with Kathleen to see the baby via ultrasound! Tried to find out if it is a boy or a girl. But the baby was being shy! =(
Went to the ER with Norm. Trying to get his kidney stones taken care of. Got some referals to some urologist. Miraculously got an appointment for Wednesday (after trying a ton of doctors).
And tonight we are eating American PIZZA!
Its been a busy few days. But we are so happy to be seeing the family and spending time with them. The kids are in HEAVEN and my mom is too!
Thanks for your prayers. Please pray for Norm’s appointment on Wednesday. We are hoping they will approve the procedure and be able to get it done before Norm goes back to Dakar on the 19th.
The grassy place!
We leave tonight at 11pm our time, 4pm PST. We are headed to California or as Canaan calls it… “the grassy place.” Since we RARELY see grass here… Haha. Please pray for our trip. We will lay over in Spain for 5 hours. Then we have a 12 or 13 hour flight to LAX from Madrid. Pray that the boys would have a good time and that they would not go to stir crazy. We have bought them a few new fun things for each leg of the race and some of their favorite snacks. Pray for Norm too. We are praying that he wont have any kidney pain. He has had some level of pain nearly every day since the first one came out. Several times it has been very severe. So please pray that everything will stay put and not cause any pain. We have packed pain meds just in case.
Its been getting warmer here in Dakar with high humidity. We had a real feel temp yesterday of 102 degrees. Not too bad. But still warm enough to play in the water. Here are some pics of the kids enjoying a day off from school yesterday.
Mercredi!
For a while Emmaus had been complaining when I put his shoes on. One of them just didn’t seem like it went on right. After a few days of this I decided to check out the shoe and see if there was something strange. Sure enough… I look in and the whole front inside of the shoe was raised up. He could not even get his feet in all the way. There was about an inch that was raised up. It was so odd. It was like someone stuck a balloon in the tip of his sandal. I discovered that somehow over time a bunch of sand was building up in there. This is the pile of sand that I got out of his sandal. THATS A LOT OF SAND! And it all came out of a small child’s sandal. Poor guy had been walking around with all that sand stuck under the sole of his shoe.
Today I took the kids out to run some errands. I wanted to find some snacks to take on the plane with us for the kids. They love some of the local cookies. So we walked down to the local boutique. These boutiques are everywhere! This is our favourite. The guy who runs it is really nice. The boutique next to this one is pretty much exactly the same… except the people are always so rude. This man asks about the kids and Norm EVERY time I go there. I don’t think he speaks French. He knows enough to say hi and know the names of his products. But its still nice that he gives the effort. Hopefully one day we will have a common language and we can talk about God’s incredible love. But for now we will just show it to him by our actions.
This is Canaan sitting just outside the boutique.
Eating lollipops from the boutique.
Here the boys are sitting at the bakery across from our house. I had to stop in and pay for the bread I had bought the day before. We are friends with the guys who does all the baking and cooking a this bakery. He is such a nice guy. He is our friend Prosper’s brother. Pray for him that we would be a good influence on him and that we would get the chance to share the gospel with him. On Sunday I bumped into him as I was getting a taxi to go to church. I was bugging him to come to church with us. He said maybe some other time. He has also asked us to find him a wife from California. Haha! This is a VERY common request. We get asked that at least once a week by all sorts of people.
Canaan made this for me at school. It says that it is a reward for being the best mom in the world. He was VERY proud to bring it home and give it to me. He did a great job at writing everything. Its all in French… even my name! Bravo Canaan! I am so proud of you and so proud to be your mommy!
Well hope you enjoyed the pictures and some random culture. We head to California in 2 days. Boy are we excited. Especially since in the last 2 days the power has been TERRIBLE and the heat and humidity has skyrocketed! California is looking so good right now! =)
Bricks
One thing we see every single day is brick making. This is a huge industry in Dakar. Its hard nasty work. But it is so nice to see people working and earning a living instead of sitting around. Many people do not have jobs or a way to earn money for their families. We hope you enjoy this short video of something very very common, yet interesting!
Sunday evening ramblings!
Ever since we found out Norm had a second stone in his kidney, just waiting to come out, I had decided to try to prepare for our trip to the States as efficiently as possible. We just never know if we will have a few days in the hospital again. I have been keeping detailed lists of things to do and trying to get them all done as soon as possible. I am so glad I have been doing that. Because of that, when Norm said he was feeling pain again I was not panicked at all… totally ready.
We were eating dinner Saturday evening and Norm said he needed to go lay down. I hurried the kids through dinner, bathed them, got them into bed all before 6:30 so that I could focus all my attention on Norm. Just after I finished getting the kids into bed, Norm said the pain was getting unbearable. I grabbed the prescription the doctor had written for Norm, just in case of need! Went to the neighbors and asked if they would pick up the medicine for Norm. Luckily we have awesome neighbors and even though they had company over, they ran to the pharmacy for us. We got Norm on meds around 7:30. They worked pretty fast and dulled the pain just enough that he could lay down instead of pacing circles around the living room. By 10:30 the pain was nearly gone. Praise God! It was not fun, but over fairly quickly. We have no idea at this point if the stone passed or if part of it broke off and went through. We are going to go see a doctor to get a scan and see what happened. We are praying for a miracle. We are praying that the stone went through and that this whole crazy ordeal is over with. But, I read that if a stone is over 6mm it almost NEVER comes out on its own, it is nearly impossible physically for it to do so. The doctor estimated it to be between 6 and 8mm. Please pray with us that it is all gone and out of his kidney now. We will let you all know as soon as we know anything new.
We were pretty disappointed because Norm was definitely not feeling up to going to church this morning after going through that last night. Normally it would not be a big deal to miss one service, but this is our last Sunday here for the summer. (At least for the boys and me. Norm returns June 20th.) So despite being tired and worn out, I got up with the kids, got them all ready for church and we headed out by taxi to church. I am so glad we did. It was so wonderful to see our friends one last time. We had a wonderful time worshiping God with them. Even though its not my language, not my culture, and not my comfort zone, we have truly come to love our church. We are fed in a whole new way than in our churches at home. We do not sing in English, we do not hear sermons in English. Its more like humming along to songs that you know are glorifying God, yet you don’t know what the words mean. More like listening to the sermon and catching some of the different points, but almost never truly getting the whole story, always being a little bit lost. But yet we feel their excitement, we feel their love for God, we see their eagerness to grow and learn more about God, we see their desire to serve God no matter the cost. We are so proud of them. We are so blessed to be their friends. I will really miss our church and our friends in Dakar. It will only be three months. I know it will fly by. I am though, very excited to go home and sing songs that truly touch my heart because I understand them. I am truly excited to go home and listen to a sermon and actually understand the whole thing.
I am nervous though. I feel like my home culture is no longer my culture. I feel like I have such a mix in me that I no longer truly belong to any specific culture. I am a little nervous to go back home. I definitely don’t have any nice clothes, they are all faded with holes in them. I only own dirty old flip flops. All of my jewelry have been destroyed by the humidity. I am used to living on pennies a day. But I truly can’t wait to step foot into a Starbucks, or any American fast food joint! And MOST OF ALL, I AM DYING TO HUG MY FAMILY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All that to say I am HAPPY, I am sad, I am nervous. I am so glad to be God’s child. He is so comforting and caring. Please pray for us as we prepare to head home. We have a few days left. We fly out Friday night. We cant hardly wait to see many of you!
Stoned!
Well, it has definitely been the week of stones. After my little kidney stone incident last week I’d been looking forward to getting busy preparing for our upcoming trip to the US. But today was not what I expected! Our mission’s Senegalese headquarters/guest house is situated across the road from the main university campus in Senegal. Riots are not unheard of and since I started working full time at the headquarters there have been a handful of them. Often the police will show up, shoot off some tear gas and that is that. Today the students were a little more upset than normal. Debra and I arrived at the mission base around 10am for a meeting and boy are we thankful we didn’t arrive any later! By 10:10 a van of riot police had shown up and threw tear gas before retreating. The retreat just encouraged the rioting students who pursued the police down the road in front of our building. Soon the students were erecting barricades in front of our gate and throwing rocks at any cars in sight. A number of cars in front of our gate had their windows smashed in. Being the curious bystanders that we were, a number of us were on the roof of the guest house watching the proceedings unfold. Suddenly a number of the rioters noticed us watching and started pointing and shouting. We immediately started running for the door but not before they hurled some rocks our way. I was about five feet from the door when I felt a thud on the right side of my head. For some reason, my first thought was ‘weird, that actually didn’t hurt!’ There was a lot of blood, which is common with head/scalp wounds I am told. Thankfully it is not too serious but will leave me with a good headache and maybe a goose-egg. I suppose I would have gone if it was absolutely necessary, but I was quite adamant that I was not going to be making another trip to see a doctor, I have already spent enough time talking to our insurance provider.
Thanks goes to Debra Lynn and my coworker Bill for taking such great care of me. Bill and his wife Debby also spent a lot of time helping us when I was in the hospital last week. Above all, we are thankful for the Lord’s protection.
Well, let’s see if we can have a calm week before we head to California. See you soon!
Baptisms!
On Sunday we celebrated baptisms at our church. This was the first time we have had them since our arrival. Being baptized in a muslim country is not easy. If you have a Muslim family and support network and you switch to Christianity, you will likely be cut off from everything… housing, food, work. Life here in West Africa is much different than America. It is a relational culture. Everyone depends on everyone else. You can’t survive without your family network.
Five people were baptized at our church on Sunday. It was definitely the most rewarding and exciting thing since our arrival. One of the guys who was baptized converted from Islam. He has had so many problems. His family disowned him and the people he is living with had told him that he could no longer eat with them. But each Sunday, he come with an extreme hunger to learn more about God. He is so joyful. He never stops smiling. Sometimes after church instead of greeting everyone in the traditional way, he will be standing alone with his nose in the Bible… eagerly soaking it all in and asking many questions.
Several of the others converted from a mixture of Catholicism and Animism. Even though its not Islam. The Catholic families here in Senegal will also disown their family members who switch to Christianity. We heard some pretty awesome testimonies. They shared their testimonies in either French or Jola (their native tongue) and would then be translated into either French or Jola, whichever one they did not speak in. We recorded the testimonies and would love to show them to anyone who would like to see them. And we will do our best to translate them for you. They are so touching.
We sang, we prayed, we listened to a short message and then around 12:30, we all piled out of the church into the courtyard for the baptisms. They constructed a small crate with a tarp inside to use as a baptismal. Last year they did them at the beach. But most everyone is so poor it would be too much of a burden to have to pay for transport to the beach (a couple miles away). This way more people could be there and be witnesses to such a great miracle.
The baptisms themselves were so touching, we were all holding back tears of joy. I love experiencing things like this in cross cultural situations. I love seeing the way they do it, instead of the way I grew up seeing it done and doing myself. I love seeing them love the Lord and serve Him with all their might and doing the normal “Christian” things but in ways that you would not see in my culture. They way we give offering, the way we sing, the way we pray, the way we take communion, the way a church service is run. Its all different and it is all still so pleasing to the Lord and based on the bible!
The frame work for the baptisms was very much the same. The person being baptized gets in the water. The people who are doing the baptisms say the typical baptism words (but in French!!) and they dunk! But it was so different to me to see what happened AFTER they came up from the water. Everyone would breakout into song and start dancing and shouting and cheering and clapping. It was truly a CELEBRATION! Such VICTORY! Wow! We had four young men get baptized and one woman.
The woman in our church are like sisters. They ban together. Its like a secret club. I love it. After the lady was baptized they all had branches from a tree. They sang and danced and celebrated together. One of their own was baptized. I am not sure what it is, but it seems that woman don’t get baptized very often in this culture. I really hope and pray that that will change!
We have a lot of photos and video footage. We are hoping to get it uncut and loaded onto the internet for anyone who wants to see it. We also hope to make a shorter video that has been edited, but I am not sure exactly when we will be able to get that up. But for now enjoy the sampling of photos. Also there are a bunch more on our flickr photos page. Feel free to check it out there.
Finally, PLEASE be in prayer for these 5. And also for all the other many many believers who are being persecuted daily here in Senegal and all around the world. They need our prayers and support. They face much difficulty on a daily basis. We live such free lives not being persecuted for our religion. Don’t take it for granted!
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!
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