A near-death experience

Journal Entry 6-30-10 and 7-1-10

I was hooked up to an IV for the day after being sick;
 my team members kept checking in on me the duration of the day.

I never understood when people said they had a near-death experience due to sickness, I know exactly what they mean now. I am writing while hooked up to an IV in my room. I woke up early this morning around 1:15am and was sick till 8am. It was the worst experience of my life, I haven't been so sick! Around 6:45am, once everything was out of my system, my body decided that I needed to puke but there was nothing left so I had dry heaves-I'm pretty sure I puked up some sort of lining from my intestines. Ha! I remember praying, "God, just take me now..." I laugh about it now but was really serious at the time. We are not sure what happened but I was treated for a parasite and given electrolytes due to dehydration. I've never had an IV before. My veins are tiny=I was poked a total of 3 times on one hand and 4 times on the other before we got the liquids flowing. My hands are bruised. Ouch! I was taken off the IV and parasite meds around noon but 10 mins afterwards I puked again-everything came back up. I was not able to hold anything down, it was bad. I was hooked up again and wasn't taken off of the IV till midnight. I was well taken care of though-the entire clinic came to me. I had a pastor come and pray over me, 2 doctors checked in on me and a nurse was constantly stopping by. People cared and it made me feel loved. Food sounded gross but I forced myself to eat a little soup and some rice. I was craving applesauce so bad-but there is no such thing in Kenya. Ugh!

I was able to wash up the next morning-there is something wonderful about washing yourself after being in a bed for an entire day. I was so happy to change into clean clothes, body spray myself, brush teeth and put on some lipstick-the little things in life. Ha! We left for Nairobi, after lunch- took a taxi for 2 hours. I was nervous since I was just sick and did not want to get sick while in transit-that would've been bad. We made it and will be spending the weekend with our host missionary family-they have real showers (warm water) and toilets that flush. I am so psyched! The missionary family took us out to a nice restaurant for dinner they had all you could eat ribs...I had soup. Not even funny.