Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Sickness and Medicines

This past week our dear friend, Lee Shaw, came down with an awful sickness. She is in a lot of pain. She thought it to be strep…but now the doctor says granular pharyngitis. The ‘granular’ is grains of infection…actually open blisters on her throat. She's been on antibiotic and pain killers for 4 days and nothing seems to be touching it. She went for her 3rd injection of antibiotic yesterday. Please pray for our friend and fellow missionary that God would heal those terrible blisters in her throat.
Lee's son, Daniel, is a friend of Coby and Austin's, and he's been hanging out at our house for the past week since his mom isn't feeling well. Not that this is related, but the last couple of days Ricky has not been feeling well either. His throat began to hurt and then his ears were clogging up, and he has lots of congestion. He began taking some Penicillin as soon as he felt the symptoms coming on. He took the last pill last night, so this morning we went to the chemist (pharmacy) and told them what his symptoms were. They sold us antibiotic right over the counter - no prescription necessary. WOW! This is something that we've had to get used to with living in Africa. You can go to any chemist and get most medicines over the counter that would normally be prescription only in the US. And, not only is the medicine readily available, but inexpensive too. It's amazing how much we spend for groceries, restaurants, and housing, but yet medicine is very reasonably priced. He got 5 days of antibiotics plus some pain medicine to use as needed for 45,000ZMK (approx. $13). So, if you can diagnose your own sickness, then there's no need to visit the doctor, just go straight to the pharmacy.

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