A Birthday Only Burkina Faso Could Give

So for those of you who have dislocated your shoulder, this you will be able to relate to, but for those of you who haven’t, imagine breaking a bone that cuts off feeling and blood flow to the distal appendage. Either way, it sucks really bad.

Everyone loves the high dive right, until you dislocate your shoulder doing a swan dive stone sober and can’t get your shoulder back in place, even after all your friends at the pool who are Pre-Med give it the good old college try. Everyone there, including me wanted to get it back into the socket in fear of me actually having to go to a Burkinabe hospital! After many painful and unsuccessful attempts, I decided to give up and call the Peace Corps medical staff and see what 3rd world medicine is all about. I thought it can’t be all that bad. We found the “good” expatriate private hospital only after getting lost on unpaved, pothole ridden back streets of Ouagadougou. Every bump made me appreciate our perfectly smooth streets back home. When we got there the clinic was actually nicer than I expected and almost empty. The Peace Corps nurse with me had limited French, so it was up to me to do most of the translating and explaining. This was probably the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced due to the excruciating pain. They didn’t believe me that it was dislocated and wanted to check my range of motion. After about a second of the nurse moving my arm around I about passed out. They then missed my vein 3 times and proceeded to fill my surrounding tissue with IV solution. After a few curses in French they finally got the IV started and gave me a generic form of a drug that neither I, nor my PC nurse had heard of, but I was in such pain anything would have helped. I made it in to a wheelchair and took me to the x-ray room, where they had the same machine my mom probably learned on back in the 70's. The x-rays only stated the obvious; that it was out of its’ socket, but more importantly that nothing was broken or chipped. Before the doctor arrived all I could think about was not being able to get it done here in Burkina and having to fly to a more developed country that could pop my shoulder back in place. I cringed at the thought of the possible turbulence on the flight and the idea of my shoulder still being out of its socket for days. I then waited to about 3 hours till a doctor could be woken, and convinced to come to the hospital. A lot of Valium later, and a few big Burkinabe pulling on my arm they got my shoulder back in place. Getting it back in place was a great relief and a birthday present only Burkina Faso could give. They put me in an almost full upper body hard cast which almost degraded into paste from sweating in the 115 F heat. Finally that’s off now and I have a much cooler (temp) sling to wear and I have started doing physical therapy. I only hope that I can write on the blackboard next week for school, or teaching might become a little more interesting.