my double chin

This last week has been insane. The first of February I started to feel a lump forming on my chin. My throat felt a little scratchy so I figured maybe I was getting a cold. Much to my dismay and my vanity, the lump grew and grew...and grew until one morning I woke up to find I had gained a second chin. This was no small lump. I looked like a blowfish or a frog that forgets to deflate that little chin thing it blows out. I looked like Tim Allen in the Santa Clause after he sees how fat he has gotten, but just in my face. I have so many comparative terms but I will spare you the details all at once. I knew I could not teach with my chin growth, much less eat, drink or swallow. Determined not to be plagued with the cruel nicknames for teachers I know 8th graders are more than capable of producing, I texted the director of my school and said I was sick.

After the slight nervous breakdown caused by Mt. St. Helens on my chin, I texted the emergency medical number for PC here in Moz and received instructions to go to the local hospital and have a surgical technician look at it. That job title sounded high-fallutin for my hood so I texted a Cuban doctor I met who worked there and she assured me that, indeed, a tech did exist. My roommate and I were unable to find a private ride to the hospital so we had to chapa it. Under the Nampula sun, I wore a jacket zipped up to hide my growth - a sweaty sacrifice I was willing to make.

The hospital I went to for an evaluation would send shudders down the spine of anyone who has every been treated in an American hospital. We can moan and complain all we want about healthcare in the US and the cost but we have it SO good. In one part of the hospital compound, there was a huge mass of people waiting to see a doctor, more likely, a nurse. Most of them women with babies or small children. They all sat outside patiently and I would not be surprised if they had been there since the very early morning. The main hospital had old wooden paneling and smelled like what I imagine the entire ytear of 1945 as smelling like. It seemed that the furniture and decor had not been updated since the hospital came into existence. Each hospital room looked like an abandoned haunted hospital straight out of a Stephen King horror novel. The equipment was all old and I did not see a single electronic device the entire time, save for a rusty refridgerator contraption with Blood Bank written on the outside sitting in the corner of the waiting area. When the doctor finally saw me, he proclaimed it to be both hard and large, an astounding diagnosis and proceeded to hand me a prescription for a drug I am allergic to.

We left the compound, crumpled ball of prescription paper in hand and headed back to the road. After walking for about 10 minutes or so, we caught a chapa heading back in our direction. Once at home, I dug through my medical kit and started taking an antibiotic they give us in emergencies and got clearance to take it. The kits are quite nice that the PC gives us, with everything from gauze and ACE bandages to ibuprofen and rehydration tablets. I hoped it would help but it was not meant to be. I continued to swell like I was spawning an alien out of my throat and gained a fever. The icing on this cake of fun was when the energy of our house died. You have not lived until you grope around blindly in the dark for your wind-up flashlight so that you can kill a cockroach the size of your thumb that is stuck between a poster and your wall with a flip-flop. No sirree.

I woke up the next morning in a state that trumps Jay Leno in the chin department. By late morning, I was booked for a flight down to Maputo to see an ENT. Of course I could not get a private ride so I had to take a chapa to Nampula - a trip fraught with the cobrador patting me on the backside, an unexpected hour and a half wait in Namialo so the chapa could fill again, a chapa driver who was on a quest to tell me every word of English he knew so I could feign amazement and surprise - 1, 2, 3, thank you, how are you, driver, etc. - and being forced to sit on a sack of flour with black pants on. All of this with a capulana around my neck to avoid people staring even more than they usually do. Once I finally got to Nampula, I stumbled out of the chapa, feet and my emotions both numb, and took a taxi directly to the airport so wait four hours for my flight. At the airport, I made small talk with the airport guard, a dude flying to Beira and wasted time chugging a fanta and chewing my french fries in the airport restaurant down to a fine paste.

The main roadblock I met with coming to Maputo for medical attention was the chapa situation right now in the city. The price of gas was increased so the chapa drivers increased their fares by 100 percent, something that most people cannot afford when they have mouths to feed and children to send to school. It was declared illegal for them to charge this fare and the drivers went on strike. People began burning tires, throwing rocks and blocking roads in protest. A few have died and several were injured. The protests have spread northward more as well and the drivers and the government are in a state of negotiation.

After a night in a hotel, I was taken to the hospital where I was to stay for five nights. It was one of the most boring experiences of my life. I had no television, no internet and no one who spoke fluent English to describe the medical procedure they needed to do. I went to go see an ultrasound technician. She was a portuguese lady with a raspy Marge Simpson voice and laugh who took one look at my chin and put her hands to her head in alarm. As she squirted jelly on my chin and began to monitor what exactly had made me look like Fat Albert, I could not help but ask whether it was a boy or a girl. She said it was too early to tell, but she could tell me that there was a pocket of puss in there - aka a bacterial infection. Puss pocket. Not to be juvenile and disgusting but it reminds me too much of the hot pocket jingle but with puss pocket inserted. Puss Pocket!

After a couple days of a drip in a vein in my hand, a shot in the backside and three pills every two hours, I went down to have a mini-operation done with a local anaesthetic. I am just going to admit that I had a nervous breakdown on that bed. Crying. Sweating profusely. Heavy breathing. Clammy skin. I felt I had valid reasons to freak out. People who do not speak fluent English cutting open my neck with just a local anaesthetic in Mozambique. No family with me and no one to hold my hand. When he finishes, the doctor asks me why I am crying. He was lucky he was the one holding sharp objects at that point. That was the first time I have every snapped at a doctor. He kept saying acabou! acabou! finished! finished! but I couldnt just turn off my panic attack like it was a switch. I snapped EU SE! I know! I think I scared him. I told Isadora, the PC doctor, I was none too fond of him and I think she relayed that message. She thought it was hilarious. I love Isadora.

While he was sucking out the Puss Pocket! from a hole he cut in my throat, I guess he saw something else wrong with my thyroid. So they patched me up, sent me back to my room and drew more blood. After those five long nights in a hospital room, I am staying at a hotel with fellow PCVs in the city, waiting for the strike to end and my test results to come back. In my first two hours at the hotel, I fell down, flat-out sprawled out three times on the stairs of the hotel, spraining my ankle. I must have walked under a ladder somewhere. Where's a large plastic bubble when you need one? I will update as soon as I know more about this chin problem. Hope all is well and that no one else has contracted odd abcesses on body parts. Cheers!