On Monday night we got back from our rollercoaster of a weekend in Zanzibar and started packing our bags to come home. We left two of our suitcases with the CCC, so we had to figure out how we wanted to pack all of our belongings and souvenirs. I don't think any of us realized how much we bought while we were over there until we packed. My souvenirs filled an entire carry on suitcase, plus part of my large suitcase. We all decided to leave most of our toiletries in the hallway closet of the house for the next guests to use. We way overshot the amount of deet bug spray, sunscreen, shampoo/conditioner, etc. that we would need, but it was better to have too much, rather than not enough. Plus, this meant more room for souvenirs on the way home!
None of us slept great that last night in the house. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but maybe it was that we were all sad our journey had come to an end. All four of us cannot believe how fast the time went. Those three weeks flew by. We would have all loved at least one more week there to finish some of the tasks that we started, but it was time to head back to our reality.
That morning we made the 17 minute long walk to the CCC. We now know the exact amount of time it takes because this particular time I decided to video the entire walk. I thought it would be fun to speed the video up and be able to show people the walk that we made between one to three times per day (depending on if we went home for lunch, locked ourselves out of the house and had to walk back to the clinic, etc.). We got to the clinic that morning and everyone, including us, was extremely sad that it was our last few hours there. We planned on staying at the clinic until around 1pm, would head home to shower and do last minute packing, and then had to leave for the airport around 5pm. When we got there, it was like any other morning. The staff was getting ready for their Tuesday clinic day, and the four of us set up in the conference room like we often did. We thought everyone was coming in for the daily morning meeting to talk about patients coming in that day, but quickly realized that the entire staff was there to properly send us off. We sat around in a big circle and they all took turns to say a few words to us. As we all tried to hold back our tears, we listened as they gave us more credit than we deserved. Some of the comments that stuck out most to us were from the two doctors, Furaha and Oliver. Furaha told us that we had become part of their family and this was so heartwarming to hear because we felt the exact same way. We were going to miss all of these wonderful people that we learned to love in such a short amount of time. Furaha then went on to say that we took the three weeks that we were here and did what some people would take a year to do. Oliver agreed and said that when he first heard that we were only coming for 3 weeks, he didn't think that it would be enough time. However, he was pleasantly surprised and very impressed by all that we got accomplished in such a short amount of time. Hearing these two doctors, that we respect tremendously, talk about how much our work will improve their daily practice and work flow made all of our hard work worth it. There were very few days during our time in Moshi that we weren't working from sun up to sun down. After clinic and infusion days, we would go back to our cozy little house, pull out our computers, and continue to work on their protocols and workflows. One of our biggest accomplishments while there was taking their chemotherapy protocols and putting them onto their chemotherapy order form. Now when a patient comes into the clinic and needs chemotherapy, Furaha and Oliver can grab the sheet of paper with the correct protocol already entered in, and fill in the dose that is applicable to that specific patient. This saves them so much time. Unless they want to change the protocol for special circumstances, they no longer have to look up the protocol and handwrite each chemotherapy medication, the supportive medications, IV fluids, etc. They can just review the protocol, circle what they want, and fill in the couple of blank spaces.
After the staff went around and spoke, we got the opportunity to thank all of them for graciously welcoming us into their lives. The past three weeks had exceeded our expectations by a long shot, and we would have loved to be able to bring them all home with us so we didn't have to say goodbye. Just as we thought the meeting was over, the staff brought out a cake that was decorated like the Tanzanian flag, and they gave us four BEAUTIFUL pieces of fabric to which they tied around each of us individually. We then took a lot of pictures, the four of us cut the cake together as if it was our wedding day, and Nat fed Jane a piece of cake which is tradition. We enjoyed cake, toasted each other with glass soda bottles, and gave many many hugs. Then as their clinic day started, the four of us finished up last minute odds and ends, Nat and Kari wrote a letter to the executive director regarding what we accomplished and what we recommend, and Brittany and I went to pay off our invoices for our stay. Little did we know they wanted us to pay for the house in USD, and not in a couple million shillings. At first the man counting the shillings seemed a little upset with us, but when I told him "money is money", the entire office had a good laugh and we left off on good terms!
Around 1pm, we said our final goodbyes to the CCC staff and walked back to A18 one last time....our cozy home for the past 3 weeks. Fatuma had prepared one final meal for us and it was delicious. We were definitely going to miss her cooking, but more importantly her warmth that she greeted us with every morning, afternoon, and evening.
A little before 5:00, Festo came to our house, followed by Jane and her friend shortly after. Festo, my Tanzanian husband (the dowry is still being worked out), wanted to bring me to the airport to say goodbye, and then Jane's friend would bring the other girls. So we packed up the cars, took pictures with Fatuma, and we were off. We drove the 45 minutes to the airport, all a bit sad and numb.
We arrived to the airport 3 1/2 hours before our flight to Amsterdam, wanting to allow enough time for any mishaps. Thankfully, besides my bag being 1.9 kg over the weight limit, all went smoothly...I didn't even have to pay an overage fee. I just got a wink from the airport worker and went along my merry way. We made it through security, bought more souvenirs, had dinner, and went to our gate. All was going well...until it wasn't. We were sitting in a row of chairs and Nat was teaching me how to count from 1 to 10 in Swahili. I was killing it until I forgot what "6" was. I hear the lady behind us say "sita" which is "6", so I turned to smile at her, but in the meantime I accidently bumped my carry on suitcase. Normally this would not be an issue, but I left the handle all the way up and had my heavy tote resting on the suitcase, so when it fell, it fell HARD. Before I knew it, the handle SMACKED a lady in the head that was sitting right in front of me. The noise that it made will forever be stuck in my head. As the lady yelled "ouch, oh my god" and grabbed her head, all eyes were on me. I'm sure I turned an unhealthy shade of purple and wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I apologized like crazy, but I'm sure the women couldn't even think clearly. As she turned around, I thought...."hmmmm that lady looks kind of familiar....is that one of the Physician Assistants from Southdale Hospital? Noooo, it couldn't be. Could it?" Well you guessed it. It was one of the PAs from the hospital. Not only did I smoke someone in the head with my luggage in Africa, but it just happens to be someone I know. Seriously, when will this dark cloud find someone else to linger over. After a few minutes of awkwardness, me apologizing like crazy again, and then all of us realizing that we know each other, we spent the next 30 minutes talking about our trips. We found out that she and her husband were on their honeymoon, had done a safari, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, and now were heading to Amsterdam for a few days. It really is a small world after all. I apologized again, she said she was glad that I hit her and not someone else (really, I would have preferred a stranger), and we all boarded our flight to Amsterdam...
We settled into our seats on the huge KLM plane that was taking us on our first leg of our trip home. Little did we know, this plane was scheduled for a 1 hour layover in Dar es Saalem. So we landed in Dar but this time we didn't try to get off the plane. Most of the plane unloaded, but we sat there, unable to watch movies or do anything except stare at each other, while they refueled, restocked, changed over the flight crew, and vacuumed around us. As the plane started to fill back up, I crossed my fingers that whomever was assigned to the the seat I was sitting in would change seats with me. All 3 of the other girls were together in the four person row in the middle of the plane, then there was a random stranger in the aisle seat, and then I was in the aisle seat across from him. I figured if I asked nicely and told the person that the four of us were together, it would be an easy switch. NOPE! In walks this big burly man with dreadlocks, who smelled of alcohol. I begin to explain to him why I'm in his seat and why he should just take mine, which is also a wonderful aisle seat. He was not having it. He said "I will start off in my seat. Then maybe after we take off we can switch." "But sir, I'm already IN your seat. Could you please just take my seat which is also an aisle seat. I would like to sit with my friends." At this time, a flight attendant came up to us and asked what was going on. She immediately understood and asked the man if he would switch seats with me. She talked to him for a minute before he looked at me and said "You are a bad negotiator!" Ummmm ok...but you're still taking my seat, right?!
We heard that we were ahead of schedule and we would be taking off. The pilot was not messing around because they started taxiing down the runway while about 15 people were still trying to find their seat. I like your promptness, Captain, but let's let people buckle up, eh! The flight took off from Dar and we were all wiped. All four of us start to doze off. Brittany has taken her Dramamine and Benadryl, and I have taken my Ativan for the flight. I'm not sure how much time had passed (probably not a lot), but I hear a bit of commotion. I open up my eyes just enough to see two flight attendants go running by, and one of them yells "someone grab the medical kit!" Great, here we go.... I sit up, kind of unsure where I am or whats going on, and see that there is a group of about 5 people huddled around a row about 8 rows up. I look at the girls who are all coming out of their sleep and tell them I was going to go check it out. Good idea right...send the nurse that is doped up on Ativan to the emergency. The girls claim that before they knew it or could say that maybe someone that is not on Ativan should go, I was gone. I walk up to the group of people and see a lady sitting upright in the middle of the row. Surrounding her are her husband, another couple they traveled with, a pediatrician, and a couple flight attendants. I introduce myself and ask what's going on. Turns out this group of travelers (all in their 70s), had driven up part of Mt Kilimanjaro earlier that day. This lady was quite dehydrated, had diarrhea, too much elevation change for one day, and was just really really sick. She was super pale, sweaty, and wasn't following commands. I motioned back to the other 3 girls to bring up all of our pillows and blankets, because we wanted to get this lady laying down with her legs propped up, because she was about to pass out. The girls rushed up right in time for us to lay her down, before she started vomiting all over the floor. We talked with the pediatrician (who let's just say....the four of us needed to be running the show because I would not let this guy doctor a family member of mine if their life depended on it), and he thought we should move the lady back on the floor by the bathrooms where we would have more room to work on her. The only problem was that she kept vomiting and we knew it would only get worse when she sat up. We decided that we could try it, but we needed to SLOWLY sit her up in stages and see if she even tolerated it, otherwise we would just leave her there and work with what we had. So what does the doctor do, he sat her up super quickly and all the way up. Guess what happened....she vomited again. Well yea, we told you that sir! Well that convinced him to leave her there. We grabbed supplies, got an IV started on her, and gave her a bolus of 500mL. We raided their medication kit and found that they had Reglan (an anti-nausea med). We grabbed it and asked the pediatrician if we should give her that in hopes of it making her less nauseous. He said "no, let's wait". This was so frustrating because we knew it would help her, but we are nurses and he is a doctor, and we didn't want to practice outside of our scope. One of the flight attendants comes up to me and said that the captain wanted an update on what was going on, and that there was a doctor on the phone in Amsterdam. So the pediatrician goes up by the captain, gives him an update, talks to the doctor in Amsterdam on the phone, comes back and says, "The doctor in Amsterdam wants us to give her Reglan". Hmmmmm you don't say. (I'm sure all of our faces were priceless) Anyway, we give her Reglan and she started to perk up a bit after the 1/2 liter bolus of fluids. The only problem now was that we had 5 hours to go in the flight, didn't have anymore IV fluids, and she couldn't keep any fluids down. The Captain came out and talked to us a couple of times. He was so nice and would do whatever we said. He stated that in about an hour we would be flying over Cairo, Egypt and could stop there if need be. The lady seemed to be somewhat stable for the time being so we decided that we could continue on, knowing that there were now many cities and airports along the way to make an emergency landing, and all we needed to do was say so. We got the lady's husband sitting in an aisle seat, laid her head on his lap, and she rested. The four of us went back to our seats and checked on her frequently throughout the remainder of the trip. Shortly after we sat down, one of the flight attendants came up to us with an ipad. She thanked us over and over again for helping them out. She stated that they wouldn't have known what to do if we weren't there to help. To show us how much they appreciated us, they gave us each a $250 voucher for our next flight on Delta, KLM, or Air France. This was so unnecessary, but we definitely weren't going to pass up a flight voucher; however, I don't know that the four of us should be traveling together anytime soon....trouble seems to follow us. Haha. When we landed in Amsterdam, we all got off the plane, passing by the aisle with the lady and her husband. To our surprise, the lady was sitting upright in her seat, gave us all a smile, and her and her husband thanked us for our help. Just seeing her looking so well was thanks enough! When we were in the airport in Amsterdam, an American man came up to us and said that he was so proud of us for helping out on the plane, and seeing us help made him proud to be an American. It was so incredibly sweet. (Side note: Nat and I were talking and decided that we would all be killer nurses with no resources and in the middle of no where. The plane didn't have any alcohol wipes, so we used my hand sanitizer wipes to clean her arm before the IV was started. There also wasn't a clamp on the IV tubing to stop blood from backflowing, so I took out my hair binder and we tied it off. #resourceful)
In Amsterdam we went into various shops, sampled about a dozen stroopwafles, and made our way to McDonalds. Guess what we had.....MCKROKETS!!! Nat wasn't sure if we played it up too much in our head during the trip, or if it was because we had all been feeling under the weather since Zanzibar, but she wasn't all that impressed. Kari and I thoroughly enjoyed ours though!
After our 3 hour layover in Amsterdam, we boarded one last final flight. We started to notice that the plane wasn't going to be full and we started stalking empty rows. Before the plane door was even closed, Britt and I each found our own side row, and Nat and Kari were able to spread out in our original 4 person row. As for what happened after that...I'm not sure. I passed out the entire way home from Amsterdam. Nat even said at one point she walked up to make sure I was breathing because I hadn't moved in 4 hours. Unfortunately the other girls didn't get as good of sleep as I did, but when I did look back at them or walked by them to the bathroom, they were watching movies together, sharing headphones, and giggling....what we did for the entire three weeks.
We landed in Minneapolis, breezed through customs (not once being asked to pay additional money because we were Mzungu), collected our bags, and we all had rides waiting for us outside of door 6. We hugged each other goodbye, said we would see each other at work this weekend, and off we went.
- Cari
Here are some pictures from our final days!
- Jane and Peter (German Pharmacist) having drinks with us at the Biker Bar
We want to thank you all for reading along on our journey. None of this could have been possible without all of our loved ones donating to such a wonderful cause. The relationship we have with the CCC will be ongoing for many years to come, and we could not be more happy or proud of this new collaboration with such an amazing team in Tanzania.
Love,
Cari, Kari, Nat, and Brittany
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