The Sphere Effect

I wonder if I will rue the day that I gave my family access to my blog? Goodness me, I think everyone in the world knew more about my condition than I ever did until very recently. I guess I am glad as without the prayers of all of my wonderful friends around the world I might not be here right now to write about it!!

Hello everyone! It’s me!! Really me writing this all by myself! I am home from hospital much earlier than any expectations, and I am finally managing to drag myself onto the computer to let everyone know how well I am doing.

I am told that I should still be in South Africa Hospital for the next 3 weeks before I will be stable enough to come home to Perth and then possibly another three months in hospital in Perth before coming home to Mum and Dad’s house so you can imagine my relief to find myself in my parent’s home only 3 and a half weeks after being diagnosed with HUS. Especially after also being told that I nearly died several times except for a series of miraculous interventions on behalf of God! I cannot say that I am feeling well, but much better than I was, and I hope for a full recovery in a very short period of time.

I have to apologise to all of my non-religious friends for the overwhelming amount of religiousness in all of the previous posts (and this one) but you see, I have special insight now and I know that an awful lot of you were shooting of prayers left, right and center when you knew what a terrible situation I was in. I have to say thank you, thank you, thank you, because God listened, and he answered, and I am here today because of it.

I know that many of you will have lots of questions about what happened, and probably about MSF too, but I don’t think I will have the energy for all of that just now. I will briefly explain about the illness and will spend some time on what happened in Itang a little later on. That is all a little painful at the moment as I need to spend some time working on just how I feel about being ripped out of my dream job and country and sent back home where I feel I don’t really belong just now.

I first got ill with diarrhea around the 19th May. I didn’t think anything of it as everyone gets these things when one visits a foreign country like Ethiopia. It didn’t effect my daily work and lasted about five days. After this it turned into bloody diarrhea with abdominal cramping and severe vomiting. I was working in a Health Centre and the doctors were trying very hard to work out what was wrong with me, but any samples showed no parasites or bacteria. I was getting sicker and sicker and they decided that they needed to send me to the capital Addis Ababa to a hospital for further attention. Unfortunately this isn’t so easy as there are only 3 flights a week, and the next flight was full.

Luckily for me, one of my close local friends was good friends with the ticketing officer of Ethiopia Airlines and managed to get me on a flight. If he hadn’t, I’m told I would have died.

When I left Itang, I thought I was leaving for about three days. I barely packed any of my things, and I didn’t really get the opportunity to say goodbye to all of my friends. I have never seen them or spoken to them again, something that is very painful for me to deal with.

I was picked up and taken straight to the best private hospital in Addis where I remained for a week. I didn’t realise that I was getting sicker and sicker but the MSF people in Addis did, and it was the Medical Director who made the call to have me Medi-Vacced to Johannesburg. If he hadn’t made the call when he did, I would have died within a day.

I have very little memory of the events after I arrived in Johannesburg. It is a maze of machines, and tubes, and blood transfusions, and oxygen and no-one told me how sick I was, or that there were several times I was within hours of death. It was also a time of being uplifted and knowing that I was being held in the hands of Christ. Every day emails were pouring in from all of the world telling me that people were praying for me, and that angels surrounded me. People I knew, people I didn’t know, churches I had never heard of. This was the one thing that sustained me through all of the pain and the sickness.

There were several times where I heard the quiet voice of Christ assuring me of healing, and usually it was the next morning when some miraculous breakthrough would have happened over night.

I don’t know why I was ripped out of Itang and sent back home. I don’t understand why God would let this happen to me when all I have ever wanted to do was serve him. But throughout this all, I remain convinced that he is sovereign, and that his plans will be served not mine. I will do my best to follow him no matter what the cost.

I am not yet at a place where I can consider the future, but I think it will come very soon, and I will let you know when I start walking down that road.

Thanks once again for your amazing support without which I wouldn’t be here.

God bless all.

Heidi
xxxxxxxxxx

It is interesting sometimes to see the way that God works, when we do not know he is working!

I am still struggling with what I am going to do next year - I am still thinking that MSF is probably going to be the way that I go, but I would like to have a little more assurance that it is the best thing for me.

The only real assurance that I have felt in the last week, is that I should go to Chiang Mai - so I booked my ticket last week to come and join Kath up in the north of Thailand. And this is where we see God’s hand at work, arranging things in advance, and making sure that his purposes are achieved. Kath has been volunteering in a new and very small orphanage in Chiang Mai. They currently have two small babies (Josiah - 7 weeks, and Samuel - 3 months) and a gorgeous little 3 year old girl - Esther. There were two Thai nannies working here, particularly looking after the two babies, and they both quit on Friday.

I arrived on Saturday and together, Kath (who arrived last Monday), another volunteer Jess, and I have been looking after the children since then. The people who run the orphanage are trying to find some new nannies, but they are fortunate that they have the volunteers here already and able to step into the gap.

It is such a big job. I have watched my friends struggle with their new babies and I was aware of what a full-time job it was, but having two small babies under three months of age, one of them who never stops crying, is very difficult. In addition, not having the bond between a mother and child which perhaps helps in those times when the baby is crying at 4am, ensures that it is a very difficult job.

I must admit that I feel a bit helpless, and that most of the night-time feeding (ok all of it so far) has been done mostly by Kath and by Jess. I am now getting to see Kath in full-on worker mode, and she is fantastic. She never stops…..

I am finding that I really hate travelling on my own, so I’m really relieved to be out of Bangkok, and here in Chiang Mai with friends. I miss Banda Aceh all ready, and the friends that I made there . I really do hope to go back there at some time in the near future.

As far as Hati’s moped is concerned, I have been advised that they were buying the bike on the weekend, but haven’t been in touch with them since. As soon as I get some pics, I’ll put them up here.

I’ll keep you updated as to how I go with the babies. Anyone who knows me well will know that I am not very good with babies… It’s a great learning experience…

Warning: require_once(/home/.intrepid/kangagames/gallery.thesphereeffect.com/embed.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/kangagames/thesphereeffect.com/wp-content/plugins/wpg2/g2embed.php on line 61

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/home/.intrepid/kangagames/gallery.thesphereeffect.com/embed.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/php5/lib/pear') in /home/kangagames/thesphereeffect.com/wp-content/plugins/wpg2/g2embed.php on line 61