For The Longest Time

Yikes. This blog has suuuuure gone by the wayside over the past few months! And I might feel bad about this, if not for the fact that I have been in direct company with, what I thought was, my entire reading audience. Actually, being back in the states has allowed me to become more aware that I do have more of a following than I've been aware. That's exciting :) Granted, it's one person. But still that's a 50% increase... Not bad in times of a recession, right?

K, so I've got lots to cover. I noticed that all my bloggin buds had updated their blogs recently, also after a long sabbatical, so I figured I'd follow suit. The last entry was in March or April or something, and quite a lot has happened since then. If you weren't aware, I am currently back in the states, BUT not for too much longer. Read on for further details. I will begin this blong (get it? Blog + long because this one's gonna be a novel) with some of the immediate happenings that followed the last entry. Here goes.

The last month or so of school was a complete whirlwind. It's hard to recall now exactly all the goings-ons of the final weeks, but they were great. The kids were fantastic straight up to the end, finishing off different projects and preparing to embark on the soon-to-be new chapter of their lives - Jr. High. Yup, 5^th grade at KICS is middle school, so it's a huge transition. I organized a Jr. High shadow day for them so they could have a bitty taste of what it would be like, and the differences between primary and secondary school. It was such a great year, and even though my exhaustion level reached an all time high, it was definitely a bittersweet ending. I just simply had the best class imaginable, and had more fun with them than I thought would be possible. My younger sister was able to come visit as well, which was just so much fun for me and her and the kiddos. I was able to take a few days off of work to show her around, and we even went to Kampala for the weekend, which was also an incredible delight. A lovely end to a lovely year.

SIDENOTE: Despite having quite the chaotic schedule the last few months of the school year, I was able to make room for one rather fun extra-curricular activity... The country of Rwanda is making a grand shift towards adopting English as a national language and using it in a myriad of outlets. One of these outlets is radio, which has called for a need for English speaking DJ's. A Rwandan friend of mine who dj's for a local station was telling me about this, and how they wanted him to take on some more shows at the station and DJ in English, but he was too busy. Luckily, he was talking to the right girl. WHO, I ask you, is better qualified to talk in English than yours truly? Exactly. So, he talked to the station manager and after some minor paperwork/show-proposal, waaaa-la, I had my own radio show. Shannon, one of my roomies and fellow teachers, is my co-host for “The Melting Pot”, where we interview “foreigners” of Kigali and how they see the differences in cultures and try to pry some embarrassing stories resulting from cultural mis-communications. It's incredibly fun, and I'll have to share more about it later, cus there are some nice stories to be offered there as well.

Ok, let's move on. I finished up the year with the kiddos, had a fantastical birthday party, shed some tears over a heckuva lot of goodbyes, and came back to the States. It was so great to see the fam and friends again, have some Taco Bell (a lot of Taco Bell), and dependable, running, hot water. I missed everyone so much, and although it was a great year, being away from friends and fam was definitely the hardest part. The plan was to be home for about 2 months, including a couple weeks in Cali to visit friends, then back to Kigali in August to start prepping for another school year. But as we all know, plans don't always go the way we would have plans go...

This next part, I'll try to keep brief, and not overly dramatic (although let's be real – I love to be overly dramatic, so get ready...) Here's what went down. A couple weeks after I got home, I woke up with a radiating pain in my right shoulder/neck area. It kind of felt like some sort of pulled muscle and pinched nerve. My right arm and hand was tingly, like it was about to fall asleep all the time. It wasn't entirely unbearable, but annoying. I went to the chiropractor a couple times, and a massage therapist, but all to no avail. I eventually went to a doctor, who prescribed some steroid meds, under the assumption that it was some sort of inflamed tissue or ruptured disc that needed to “go down”. But after taking the meds, nothing was different. I decided to go in for a 2^nd opinion, and request some x-rays or MRI's, just to make sure. Upon my request, they obliged and scheduled a routine MRI. They said I should be in and out in an hour – hour and a half, tops. This was about the last week of July/1^st week of August, and I would be heading back to Kigali in about 2-3 weeks time. Unfortunately, that was just not how it ended up. They found something a little peculiar – a mysterious mass/spot on my spine, up near my neck. They kept me for more MRI's for a while, then one of the radiologists came out to talk with me. He said they were worried about the spot, and really didn't know what it was. He said I would have to go straight to the ER to see what was up. I called my parents to let them know what was going on, but no one was thinking too much of anything, so I just waited in the ER to hear any type of news. They did some more tests, and eventually had a neurosurgeon come take a look. This is where everything went afoul. The neurosurgeon, Chuck, my soon-to-be close friend, came in to talk with me. He said they didn't know what the spot was, and needed to find out, and soon. If it was something that would grow or be life-threatening, they needed to get in there fast. He said I would have to be admitted to the hospital right away, and would need emergency surgery within 24 hours. He also said that it could be one of two things – a fungal blood infection, or a tumor. Both cases would require some intense treatment, and he said for sure I would not be heading back to Africa when I was planning, nor did he expect for me to be going any time soon - or at all.

Yep. That's what he said.

Needless to say, I felt as if my world had come CRASHING down. Everything had flipped upside down in a minute. I called my parents and had them come to the hospital, figuring I wasn't quite in my right mind and might need some help making sense of it all. Eventually, they moved me to the main hospital, and said they would be prepping me for surgery all day the next day, and I would be having surgery early the following morning. To oversimplify – it was really scary. It was all really sudden and fast and everything was just askew. Yet, despite all that – I knew I was covered in prayer. And that part was just incomparable. Really.

So, I had the surgery, and was in the hospital for another 2 days in recovery before I went home. They removed about 2/3 of whatever-it-was, but the last 1/3 was pretty small, and right on the spinal cord, so removing it was gonna be too risky. So there it stayed. They were going to do tests on the part they did remove, try to figure out what it was, decide on treatment, and let me know what my life would entail in the following months. Unfortunately, this process sure did take a hot second. And I mean REALLY. They thought they would know in a matter of days, but this turned into weeks. Like I said before, it was either a blood infection or a tumor. We were really gunning for the blood infection, because the treatment for that would just be to take some antibiotics for about 6 weeks, and that would be that. The tumor would require more extensive treatment, namely chemo and radiation. But again, things weren't quite what we were hoping for. I decided to start praying boldly. The first day of school was Sept. 14, about 6 weeks from that point. I felt really strongly that I would like to be back in Kigali to start the school year off with my students, as the beginning of the year is SO important for building a classroom community. Alas, this was not the tune Chuck was singin'. He was saying that it would likely be much more time than that before I'd be OK to leave the country, but wouldn't give me a time frame, since they still didn't know what the surprise mass was. They finally figured out that it was indeed a tumor, which was a bummer, BUT thankfully they discovered it was benign (no cancer!). SO, now they just needed to figure out what TYPE of tumor it was, so they could figure out treatment and when I could get back to work in Kigali (Yeah, I know, who knew there was more than one type of tumor? Either it's a tumor or not, right? Wrong.). About a week and a half later, they found out it was a disease called Myofibroma. Apparently, it's super rare. They had to send it some docs at Harvard Med before they came up with a diagnosis. There are a few documented cases of infants with it, but, get this – only ONE other case of it in an adult on the spine (some gal in New Zealand, apparently). So upside – I get to be in medical journals and stuff. But downside – they don't really know how to treat it. Which is a big downside. They said there were 3 options: 1)Radiation – not recommended, according to Chuck. No real indication that it would work, so that one was pretty immediately ruled out. 2)Surgery – also not recommended. What's left of the tumor is small, and right on the spinal cord, and any further surgery would prove to be really complicated and risky and involve bone marrow fusion or something that sounds gross. Anyways, again – no go. Which brings us to 3) Waiting. And this is what we're gonna do. We gon' wait. Which is kind of annoying, solely because I still have all the same symptoms I did before, BUUUUUUT the best news is, that whilst waiting, I get to head back to Rwanda!! I will have to return at Christmas for more MRI's and check-up's and what not, but the part to focus on is, for the time-being, I get to go back!!! We're still kind of in the middle of this saga, but God is good, and I trust Him. It's hard, and some days I do better than other days, but for now – it's all good :)

So, in just about a weeks' time, I'm on my way back to Kigali! I won't be teaching at KICS this year, but I will be at another school in Kigali. A brand new one called the International School of Kigali (ISK), which will be in it's first year. Almost all of the teachers at ISK were ones I was fortunate enough to teach with last year, and we're under the same headmaster as well! I'm REALLY exciting about being involved in the opening/start of a new school. This is actually what I dream of doing in the future, and am totes magotes stoked about being able to experience it first hand. I can't wait to be back in Rwanda, and although this year has a lot of new aspects (new school, new house, new roomies, etc.), it's a place I love and am anxiously awaiting my year to start there.

So, this is officially the longest blog ever written in the history of blogs... Again, it's a blong. Kudos to you if you finished though. I must say, I'm impressed.

Summer hasn't been too bad, either :)

...'cept for that whole tumor incident, I guess.