Have you ever heard of the book Where There is No Doctor (a village health care handbook)? It’s a godsend. Everything’s in there, man! Okay, not everything. On this very strange Sunday night I was in need of a book called Where There is No Doctor (and no village health care handbook with relevant sections on kerosene accidents, of the ear variety). I got a phone call around 7:30pm from a panicked Benjamin, calling on behalf of a friend whose baby, it seems, one way or another, in what seems like an impossibility, got kerosene in his ear. Lots of it. Do I know what to do? No! But I promise to call a nurse and throw in my internet modem as fast as I can to do my best. The phone cuts off in what is to be an ominously foreshadowing manner for what is to come.
While my mind is buzzing with “kerosene, kerosene, the science of kerosene…what’s in it that can do damage…arg…high school chemistry….kerosene??”, my friend MJ, an experienced nurse, picks up her phone and has what can probably be called a more “natural” reaction.
- MJ: How old is he?
- Me: I don’t know…3 or 4 months?
- MJ: How did he get KEROSENE in his ear? That doesn’t make sense.
- Me: ….(silence)
- MJ: How does that happen?
- Me: MJ what the hell, I don’t know. What do we do?
MJ of course instructed me on the only logical path—take the child to a health center and get them to flush his ears out with saline. Going to a health center during the daytime is painful enough, but nighttime is just asking for trouble. Or, rather, asking for under-trained, under-paid, tired people to get off their butts and flush out his ear. They did not. Benjamin said they did not know what saline was, which cannot possibly be true. So when I asked about using water, he said they refused to do it. Health care: 34,044,662. The people: 7.
In a HILARIOUS twist of events (HILARIOUS), my internet was working immediately and at a high speed (after a day of failed downloads and “IE cannot display this web page”s), but all the phone networks went out. So, for about an hour, Benjamin and I played cat-and-mouse with our collective of 4 phones and 5 network lines, trying to catch each other for a few precious seconds every time there was a window o f phone service for one of them. I don’t think I have to overstate to you my problems with brevity (thanks for reading!) but to be honest, it took me a few tries to get my “cutting to the chase” cut down to…well, to the chase. These are the moments when I hope desperation over the future fate of an infant’s hearing can pass thousands of miles to you via the blogosphere:
- Benja: Hey
- Me: Hey, so are you with the kid now?
- Benja: Yeah.
- Me: Okay, here is what you’re going to do.
–Phone cuts off—
(15 minutes later)
- Benja: Hey
- Me: Okay, here is what you’re going to do.
- Benja: Yes?
–Phone cuts off—
(20 minutes later)
- Benja: Hey
- Me: You know those big 1.5L bottles of water?
–Phone cuts off—
(10 minutes later)
- Benja: Hey
- Me: (speedy) Poke a small hole through the lid of a big water bottle fill the bottle with water put the lid back on and when the kid is sitting down you need to shoot that water into his ear and it’s going to continually drain out and hopefully flush his ear clean keep refilling the bottle and do it at least 3 times but that kid is going to cry because it won’t feel good but do it anyway this is the only thing I could think of.
- Benja: Ok
–Phone cuts off—
Boo-ya! Who needs to breathe while speaking? I don’t need to breathe while speaking. Punctuation is for pansies! So now all of you readers can deflate my ego by telling me what horribly unsound medical advice I just gave and how I may have defeaned a young African child. But I will FIGHT YOU if you try to deny my ability to be brief and to the point….you know, when absolutely necessary. After a few failed attempts. And definitely not in writing.
So that was the peculiar ending to my weekend. Who knew that, after months of work in microfinance, beekeeping, and eco-tourism, I might actually, finally, fulfill one task of my assignment as a Community Health Volunteer? That’s going on my quarterly report.
But really, how does an infant get kerosene in his ear? Now accepting your scenarios.
