Many Thanks!

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and other Most-Kind-Ones

Thank you so much for all of your good words and advice regarding my occular affliction – all very much  appreciated!

Of course, there are worse things that can befall one here in the tropics, aside from eye problems:

This picture has been making the rounds in central Africa. Source unkno

BTW, for those of you who have seen war movies showing a wounded soulder asking the medic for some morphine, which he then injects himself with – usually into the thigh – followed immediately with a great heave of relief and etc – morphine dosen’t work that way!  At least it didn’t for me.  About a minute after the injection it felt as if the pain was slowly receding into the background.  Always there, but lurking ‘somewhere else’ for about 4 hours.  Wierd sensation.

Morphine is so tightly controlled here in Burundi that in principal it is reserved for the military, and all empty vials must be returned to the supplier.  However, I fortunately do have some very good friends in the Burundi military who have helped out.   🙂

Now I am taking Ibuprofene 400×2 and Tramadol 50 (a ‘cousin’ of codeine), each every 6 hours.   These take the edge off of the pain, which at this point I can best describe as similar to several badly abscessed teeth in and around my eye socket.

(8-/)

A good friend brought me a box of dark Swiss chocolates while I was in the hospital, and I discovered that eating a few of them slightly reduced the pain!  Someone explained the reason to me but as I was not too comotose at the time, I can’t remember….  Other than dark chocolates I ate  fresh fruit salad and over the weeks lost about 20kgs.  I’m not sorry about that; can now fit into a lot of clothes that have just hung around for a long time.  Though, I wouldn’t recommend this as a route for weight loss.

The dotors were awed, because mine was the worst case of shingles yet treated in the hospital!  Not exactly something to be noted for….  As it turns out, shingles is fairly common here in Burundi, but usually on the body – not the face and eyes.  Probably associated with very poor or unbalanced nutrition, mainly of the poor, as well as increasing AIDS.

Other blog  features – aside from eyes – coming…