High Care & The Gatsby

We didn’t end up going out last night—Miles and Lauren were exhausted and I was actually feeling the same way. Plus, we had work in the morning and the thought of not being able to keep my eyes open for it sounded horrid. And even though I got enough sleep, I woke up late! I woke up like five minutes before uncle was supposed to pick us up to Lauren asking me if I was going to work today haha. I responded a confused yes until I realized that I didn’t wake up to my alarm, or more like I turned it off and kept sleeping….So I had literally five minutes to get myself together, and of course the only day I’m actually running late uncle shows up five minutes early!! Every morning he greets us with six loud and annoying car honks which make me groan EVERY morning. And he doesn’t even wait two minutes before he’s off honking again—how impatient! It takes a long time to get out of the house in South Africa too! You have to unlock the door in the house to get to the front door, then unlock the front door and lock it behind you, then unlock the gate door and lock that behind you as well. South African locks are also very “old school”, Victorian secret-jewelry-box looking, like you see in all of the movies. It seriously takes three minutes alone. So he’s honking away and I’m still scrambling around the house trying to get myself together, and Lauren went to start opening all of the locks to give me some extra time to get ready, when she finds uncle out of the car trying to ring our doorbell. Come on!! He is SO impatient! Lol it drives me crazy sometimes, and he was EARLY! To top it all of. Urgh.

We were headed to high care for the day, but when we arrived, we were informed that they were pretty understaffed and asked if we could come back tomorrow. We agreed, and went back to orthopedics. Mr. Smith was gone as he told us last week, but the person he was replacing, Mitchell, had returned from leave and we got to work with him. He was quite interesting; very outgoing and talked a lot! It was a pretty eventful day as well. Lots of casts needed to be removed and put on. We saw an interesting case where a young man had a gunshot wound to his humorous, and needed a cast to help the bones heal together (with the bullet still lodged). Mitchell put the plaster on and then pressed his arm really hard before the plaster was dried to get the bone back in place. He sent the patient for another x-ray when the cast was dry to check out the bone placement, only to have it come back worse than before he started! Mitchell shrugged it off and said that he was rusty from being on leave!! TIA man….(this is Africa!). So, he cut the cast and had to restart. He re-plastered the patient and tried to reshape the placement and sent him for another x-ray; this time it looked quite nice. Another man came in with a broken knee, and Mitchell had to press the side of the knee in and the other side of his leg in as well, trying to push the bone back into place, and the patient was shaking and screaming in pain; it makes me wince so much whenever I see him try to fix the bone position. I can only imagine how painful it must be.

The man from last week with the incredibly horrible smelling infected ankle wounds was back to get his dressings changed. It didn’t smell as bad, but it still cleared the room and was very gross. He was in and out quite quickly, lucky for us. There were quite a few patients in to get their stitches removed, so Lauren and I both took a lot of stitches out today. I actually like doing this, so it was exciting for me. Miles wasn’t at work again today. He wasn’t sick anymore, but he had to go to the U.S. Consulate to get an emergency passport issued. The airline was never able to locate his passport after they told him they found it, and the consulate wasn’t able to find it either, so he needed a new one to get home. Miles picked us up a little early because it was our last day with the car, and our first stop was to pick up a Gatsby (:

Just like every place you go, there is one signature food. In the states it is hamburgers or hotdogs etc, in Durban it was bunny chow (curry in a bread bowl), and in Cape Town it’s a Gatsby. A Gatsby is the most ridiculous sandwich in the world. It is HUGE and has everything you can imagine on it. We didn’t get the ones with everything on it, we got a smaller one that was recommended to us. The one we got had steak, eggs, cheese, French fries, lettuce and sauce. And the “chips” or French fries aren’t on the side; they’re literally ON the sandwich. So ridiculous, but since we are here, we had to try it once. It was the weirdest thing, and I felt like a big fat greasy man eating it haha. I only had like two bites, but never again!

After our sickening sandwich, we went downtown to the green square market, which is just a large cobblestone walking area of craft markets downtown. Miles and I got to see a ton of crafts in Durban, but Lauren hasn’t gotten to experience very much, not to mention buy much, so we wanted to take her before we had to return the car. We found a lot of good things and had lots of fun looking around together. We dropped the car off at the airport, and took a taxi back. Joan ordered pizza, and then the four of us watched Grey’s Anatomy together. I felt kind of at home, and it felt pretty good, but it made me miss it that much more. Lauren and I walked Miles half way home (he lives down the street, a two minute walk), and then we came home and got ready for bed.

While Lauren was in the shower, I had a small breakdown. I miss home so much sometimes, and I just got overwhelmed in that emotion and cried. It’s so unbelievably hard to be this far away from all of my friends and family, and my ‘own’ life. Sometimes it makes me feel like I have nobody, and I just want to feel like my friends and family care about me and miss me, and are interested in how I feel and what I’m doing while I’m here. I was just left feeling really lonely, empty and ready to come home. And I know I only have less than two weeks left, but that makes it hard too; I’m anticipating it so much! I really am enjoying my time here, but nothing compares to home, and I’ve been gone for so long. It’s not that I’m not taking everything in; I’ve learned so much and have grown incredibly from this experience, it’s just time for me to come back. I can’t wait. So I prayed and put it all in the Lord’s hand and felt great comfort; all of that emptiness was filled.