Road to Recovery FINALLY

I had a question about this, so just in case anyone else didn’t know, I will make it clear now. Miles is the other intern on this trip with me from my university. He is a very cool guy and we get along great, which is good because I have to spend every day of this ten week trip with him. And, he lives with his boyfriend back home, so (: no worries about anything.

All that happened today, surprise surprise, was more paperwork! I learned however that Kwazulu-Natal (this area of South Africa) has a higher HIV infection prevalence than the United States as a whole. Is that not mind blowing? It’s terrible. Almost every one of Dr. Khan’s patients is either HIV positive or has progressed to AIDS. In the United States, I had to search out and find an organization that worked with the HIV infected population, and here, that’s all there is. What a huge difference.

As some of you may know, I got really sick while I was in London, and it lasted with me for about two weeks. Even after those two weeks, I was still feeling sick and had some of the same symptoms to a lesser degree. I thought something was wrong, and was guessing I had an upper respiratory infection. I asked Dr. Khan to check me out since I was already there, and sure enough, he found something! It wasn’t the URI as I thought it was though. I have tonsillitis! I didn’t even think about anything being above my chest area. He noticed a bump by my tonsils in the back of my throat on the right side, and swelling of my lymph nodes on the left side. He guessed that the cold medicine I had been taking while really sick had knocked the left bump and right lymph node swelling away, but didn’t get rid of it completely. He gave me antibiotics to make it clear up, so I’m FINALLY on the road to recovery after five weeks! Yippey. I can’t wait to feel 100% again! There was really crazy wind tonight—the news said it was around 30 miles per hour, and he wasn’t joking. It sounded like it was going to take the house with it! And trees were practically tipping over; I kind of wanted to stand outside just to feel it because it was so crazy! But I thought better—nobody would have ever found me again if I had (: it would have picked me up and blown me all the way through Africa.