June 2018

It’s been just over six months now that my life took a dramatic turn with the sudden necessity to leave South Africa and my life with elephants, to receive life-saving treatment that I was denied in the country of my birth. Of these last six months, at least three have been spent in hospital on different occasions, and at least three recovering and regaining strength. There has barely been an accumulated month that I have been well enough to appreciate my new surroundings, and all in all, I have only had a handful of outings to discover this new world around me.

The most memorable day trips I have taken have been;

A visit to the Alexander River to see the endangered Nile soft-shell terrapins, huge, different-looking creatures with smooth, leather-clad carapaces almost a metre long. They have very long, pointed snouts that almost make them unnoticed by anything above the water; what is seen may as well be but a frog.

Nile Softshell

Fortunately, their exposure to the ignorant hordes is minimal, as there are designated viewing spots, and the river has long stretches that are inaccessible to the general public.

Unfortunately, however, that ignorance of the public has led to them being exposed to what the uninformed think a ‘turtle’ will or should or could eat, and terrapin/turtles freely try anything, consuming whatever is thrown in the water. Sadly, a lot of it is the snack food that is taken on a general outing by said humans, leaving generations of these enigmatic aquatic reptiles to have to cope with ADD, ADHD, AADD and an alphabet soup of other conditions that won’t quite stack up to the single greatest threat of all, the plastic that all the junk food came in.

In March, we took a trip up North, above the Galil with Mount Hermon in the northeast, to the renowned Hula Valley and Lake Hula, where millions of birds congregate on their bi-annual migration to and from Africa.

There were flocks of European bee-eaters, having recently arrived from Africa, who greeted us on arrival at dawn, and, as we rode around the lake in a hired golf cart, in the chilly morning air, mist rose off the lake, exposing more and more of the expanse and scenery, adding to the mystical feeling brought on by its silence.

A lone cormorant on Lake Hula

As the sun burned off the mist, wildlife started waking, and birdsong made me forget misery for a while. Giant rodents called Nutria, imports from South America, grazed at the water’s edge, and a few birds ruffled the sleep out of their feathers as the day began.

Then there was the day in late March when my cousin Rael took us out sailing for the afternoon; he is a master skipper, and we stayed out on the Med until long after a memorable Mediterranean sunset. I took the helm for a while after we had left the harbour, and I was the happiest I had been in months.

 

Time heals, and this is certainly true when it comes to where I am today compared to a few months ago, when I plunged into a very dark and difficult period only a week after the day out at sea.

Shortly after my birthday, on the Easter weekend, I was trying to catch up with correspondence: I was up late on that Friday night and finally called it a day shortly after midnight. A couple of hours later, in the early hours of the morning, I awoke with a strange stomach-cramp-like feeling and got up to go to the bathroom. For the next hour or more, I can’t quite remember, I became weaker and weaker as my body lost enormous amounts of blood every time I went to the toilet. At one point, I lay down on the couch in the lounge, waking my sister, and I assured her I was fine, but a bit weak and just needed to catch my breath. I was delirious and unable to comprehend my physical state; it was such a foreign feeling. Soon after that, I collapsed on the bathroom floor, slipping and sliding on the smooth tiled floor in a huge pool of my blood, I couldn’t understand what my body was doing. By this time, I was so weak and light-headed, I only vaguely remember what came next.

I remember my sister, Nadine, mentioning that she was going to call an ambulance, and I somehow found the strength to argue, but she saw how dire the situation was. Soon, I was being strapped to a gurney and wheeled away. I remember very little after that and can only document the next few days from what I was later told. At least a week is missing for me.

Excessive abdominal bleeding necessitated emergency surgery, requiring the removal of a portion of my colon and the transfusion of many, many pints of blood. I was kept sedated, in an induced coma, and on a ventilator for several days as the constant haemorrhaging and re-infection required them to perform a further three or four surgeries, and it was only on the fourth day that I awoke, briefly surfacing in ICU with tubes, drips and wires creating a spaghetti of paraphernalia around me. I was still on the ventilator and so couldn’t speak; my mouth was dry and sore, and my nose had a very uncomfortable tube. I had a catheter in my neck feeding me liquid and antibiotics, and IV drips in my arm and two drainage tubes coming out of my abdomen on each side of the foot-long incision that ran down my stomach from sternum to groin. Just to the right of where my belly button used to be was a bag that seemed to be part of my body, and the lights and the noise and activity around me were scary and confusing.

Although I had been through hell over the previous nine months, this was all of that and more rolled into one overwhelming incident. I was down a deep and dark hole, and I knew that crawling out of it would take more effort than I had summoned to get through everything else up until then.

I was in the ICU for a further week or so, the tubes had been taken out of my nose and mouth, and I was breathing on my own with the help of a bit of oxygen. I won’t even begin to describe the pain and discomfort and the inability to sleep that made my mind wander in this darkness, and my body was so weak I could barely lift my arms. To compound all this, I still required dialysis, and now and then, a machine would be wheeled in for my four-hour session. There were no indicators of time and no way to tell day or night. I wondered if there would ever be an end to the discomfort and pain.

At some point, once a special abdominal belt had been made for me, I was helped into a chair to sit up for the first time. I remember being so weak that I could barely stand, and it felt like gravitational forces had doubled with the effort it took. I sat in a chair for almost an hour on the first attempt before needing to be horizontal again.

Eventually, I was moved to a general ward and began the process of recovery and physio. After about three weeks, I was able to sit up on my own, sit in the chair for longer periods, and soon began walking a few steps with a walker frame. It was difficult at first; my brain knew what to do, but it seemed as though my body had forgotten.

After three weeks on the drip that fed me, I had to face solid food for the first time, finding it very hard to stomach anything, even things I usually ate before the incident. I was in a critical care ward with six beds, all but one full, and it filled with families and food during visiting hours; food that was as foreign as the Arabic spoken by the family of the old man next to me. The aromas and spices further nauseated me and suppressed any thought of eating.

I found that my mouth had forgotten what solid food felt like, and my taste buds had gone haywire. As much as I needed to eat, I couldn’t face food.

Toward the beginning of May, I was discharged and returned home to the care of my family, and I will forever be grateful to my parents and my sister for their patience and understanding during a very rough time. I was incapable of doing much and required a lot of help throughout the day and night, particularly with the maintenance of the stoma pouch. Without family at my side and the support they have given me, I would otherwise not be able to handle all of this. I am learning to accept my life for now, and I am concentrating on getting stronger each day.

I eventually became accustomed to the stoma bag that was now part of my life, and despite the unpleasant accident with it from time to time, I managed to get used to emptying it and replacing it and taking the necessary care. The difficulty came with dialysis, particularly the four hours on The Machine in the dialysis ward with staff that didn’t know how to or didn’t want to deal with the problems of the stoma, and when I had issues there, it was most unpleasant.

I may have gotten used to the physical aspect of having a stoma, but my mind was very far behind. The incision on my stomach was taking forever to heal, and although the stitches eventually came out, it seemed it would never close. The surgeons had sewn me closed, but only on the outside. A huge hernia was left that requires me to wear a wide elasticised belt around the abdomen.

To add to this, it was time to have a fistula made in my arm: a vascular surgeon joins an artery to a vein, a more permanent way to be hooked up to The Machine, to make dialysis much easier, and to eventually remove the catheter from my chest and neck sometime later. Another short hospital stay and more pain and discomfort ensued. Once it healed and blood flow was strong and consistent, it became the primary access and the permcath became a hindrance.

Dialysis became more difficult for me despite being less intrusive than the more prone to infection Permcath, and easier access to my blood, and I was mentally spiralling into an even darker depression.

There were many times that I wondered what the point of all the pain and suffering was, as it seemed that there was no end to it all. I was often in tears, asking the doctors why they were prolonging my agony by keeping me on The Machine.

To compound my misery, there was now the prospect that I was even further from the possibility of ever going back to my passion and my life with elephants. It seemed that under the new state that I was in, there would be no chance of a transplant, and the only way I would ever get back to Mopane Grove would be after another transplant. This was a harsh reality to face, and with it came the discussion that we would have to sell the Grove. And doing that would take away all my hope for a return and reason for enduring all that I had.

Suddenly, all the reasons I once had for why I would never leave Africa and my world with ele’s, became the reasons why I now have to stay in a foreign country and not be able to return. Mopane Grove was my world, without it,…. I don’t know what?

I had the permcath removed from my chest a few days ago, and that became the start of a new road for me. I no longer have this thing hanging from my jugular, hindering everything I do, and I took a proper shower for the first time since it was put in over eight months ago. I can now turn over in my sleep without having to wake to move it back into position or have it catch on something and risk it pulling partially out. I took a walk with my mom the other night, further than any walk I have done in months, and it felt good to feel a breeze and see the different trees that are blooming.

Soon, I will have my condition assessed for the reversal of the stoma, a surgery I am not looking forward to, as it means reopening my stomach and a further few months of healing and regaining strength. Once that has healed and I am again strong enough, I will need another surgery to reconstruct my stomach wall, yet again opening up the incision and again months of pain and healing. I am not looking forward to any of it, but I would like to be rid of this bag on my stomach and all that comes with it. I  especially like the prospect of being strong enough for another transplant.

Throughout this ordeal, I constantly thought of all the people who had sent messages, those I had yet to thank for birthday wishes sent just before it happened, and the prayers and well-wishes that were coming in via Nadine. As each day passed and I became more and more depressed, I felt more and more guilty about not writing, but because of my frame of mind, I was not inclined to contact anyone (Forgive me for this).

The darkness and despair that consumed me for the last two and a half months have lifted somewhat, and the little light that I now see brings me hope. I will soon be back online to answer messages that have piled up on Facebook, and will eventually get to yours if you are still awaiting a reply.

Please be patient.