Saturday, February 07, 2009

Bits and Bites....

Yikes, it's been a few days since I last posted...
What has been happening?
*Good news, nearly all of our caravan aircraft are back in service! Yippee! Just our amphib aircraft is in the hangar. The guys are finishing off the installation of the loaner engine. It will be good to have that plane back serving the people and churches of the south coast.
*We've been having the odd power outage again lately. Not sure why. Last Monday I went to start our generator and had a bit of a freak accident. Occasionally the pull-cord jams and as one usually uses some force when pulling the cord, the cord flies out of your hand and usually hits something. One time it hit the side of the generator and broke in half. So now we had a half pull-thingy on our pull cable. So last Monday the cable jammed, pull-thingy flies out of my left hand and smacks the bone on the wrist on my right hand so hard that I no longer have feeling from the nail of my thumb down to my wrist on that hand. It's a rather odd "feeling" that will hopefully slowly go away....
* Marc came down with a fever on that fateful Monday and so I brought him to the clinic to make a slide and then brought the slide to the most accurate slide reader, an Indonesian woman who works for an NGO of a scientific genre. She works for a couple hours each afternoon, provided she comes in. She didn't come in that Monday so I did not have the results of the slide until Tuesday afternoon. Usually I know the first day that Marc has a fever and headache and I start the quinine that very day, but this time I started a whole day later. What a difference that made! Poor guy still isn't himself yet. Normally he bounces back after two days! Learned my lesson, go with my gut.
*Today I made a blood slide for Brynnie (I've learned how to do them myself now-so nursey of me eh?) and brought it to a pharmacy that we've had some success with in the past (lady who works for NGO of scientific genre doesn't work on weekends...) and at 6:00 they called to inform me that Brynnie also has malaria tropika. Quite possibly a mosquito bit Marc earlier in the week and then went on to bite Brynnie thus infecting her. (They share a room)
*Yesterday I actually let to little girls play in our yard. To this date I had not let neighbourhood kids play in our yard. I've seen what can happen once you start.... However, 2 little girls came to the door holding hands and asked if they could play. I asked them what they wanted to play. The immediately responded, "Bikes!!" We only have one bicycle suitable for them so I told them to share and if they were to fight they would have to leave. While playing, rather nicely I might add, they gained a bit of an audience at the fence of jealous kids... It's really hard to say no to them all, but for sanity and safety, I have to have limits...

2 comments:

Tamara Jansen said...

Are you SERIOUS? Malaria? That's tough on you guys! I hope that they have begun to feel better......what on earth can you DO to avoid Mosqito bites? Vitamin B12?

Erica Feunekes said...

Marc's nearly his old self again and Brynnie is getting there. You can take prophylaxis but we'd thought we'd try without. Why put chemicals into your body if you don't have to? There's nothing that will 100% prevent malaria, it's a fact of life here...