quick note

Tera and Amy in Afghanistan

so i did it- i transported a patient by road to el geneina yesterday and i managed to arrive with life, limb and car intact :) now that i've done it once, i'm not nervous about doing it anymore. it was actually a beautiful drive. kind of indescribable really. the BEST part, by far, was the air conditioning. it was the first 4 hours that i've spent in sudan where i haven't felt like barfing from the heat. it was basically heaven. the downside? having to listen to the same tape over and over and over again for fear of hurting my drivers feelings. who's the guy who sings "caribbean queen"? (billy ocean?). that was the tape and we listened to it no less than 4 times (i know this because that's how many times i had to listen to caribbean queen). after a night in el geneina i'm now heading back to habilah in convoy with MSF france.

side note: one of the drivers just brought me a coke, and it's so cold and so refreshing that i just want to crawl into the bottle and float in it. gotta love el geneina where people have fridges that keep things colder than lukewarm :)

the patient that i transported presented with what i think is a placenta previa (not yet an emergency), but upon examination i also discovered her swollen left leg, with pain in her leg and her chest and a cough (potentially deep vein thrombosis- a huge emergency). it seems weird that in my entire life i've never had any experience with DVT, and in one month i lose my friend Tera to it, and almost lose a patient to it. people always say that you can't run away from your problems because they'll just come with you, and this trip is certainly proving that to be true. the first thing i saw when i got off the flight to el geneina two weeks ago was the remains of two plane crashes. it's always nice to start off a trip feeling like someone just hit you in the gut with a sledgehammer. the night before i transported my patient here (we can't transport at night, no matter how much of an emergency it is), i dreamt of tera all night and kept waking up feeling heartsick. it would take me a minute to realize why thinking of her hurt so much, and then i would remember that she was dead. she was only 31 and she's gone. it seems like every day something happens that opens an old wound, but i think it's a good thing. i haven't let myself really process a lot of the last few years, and maybe now that my life has slowed down a bit it's time to do that. there's absolutely nothing to do here when i'm not working, which leaves me plenty of time to journal, reflect, pray, think things through.... i'm kind of glad actually.
alright, time to head.