Sylvia's Journal

I can’t believe I wrote ‘contraception’ rather than ‘contraption.’ thanks for pointing that out Ann; clearly, we can’t help ourselves after so many years of editing and working in the field of reproductive health, the fingers typing the word on their own ignoring signals from the brain that another word was wanted.

Sita and I left at 7:15 AM for Worcester this morning and returned 11 hours later. We are both exhausted. It was an ordeal that I would like to spare Axel and Joan. Tomorrow we are going to find local orthopedes for myself and Axel in and around Beverly so that no one ever has to do this again.

My last stitches were taken out. Sita will probably be able to show for some time the imprint of my nails as I dug deep into her palms during the removal of my knee stitches (both sides). These stitches were left in for a full two weeks because of the placing of the scars. After two weeks the skin had almost completely healed over the stitches. The doctor was pleased. Now it’s just a matter of vitamin E and staying out of the sun. The belly incision has also healed well, much better than the scar of one of the young nurses at the fourth floor of UMMC who had had a similarly near fatal accident (in a car) some 13 years ago and offered good counsel and a view of her badly scarred belly.

I got a new cast, much lighter and fashionable. We had many choices: Hazard Orange, Neon Green, Barney Purple, OSHA Yellow, something that looks like the uniform of nursing aides (pastel hearts and happy faces), soccer balls, and Camouflage without or without the American flag. Sita and agreed immediately on Denim Blue to match my eyes. The cast maker was from Accra and we had a nice time talking about Ghana. He’s the first one who told me that he is going back to help his people. All the other West Africans we met at UMMC (mostly from Ghana and some from Nigeria) had no plans of returning to their broken health systems.