Every time I consider posting pictures of the crazy things that happen to my body here, I have a brief moment of, "Do I really need to make my readers squirm in their seats?" second-guessing. But, hey, it's all part of the experience, at least for me, and this blog aims to be nothing more than an honest reflection on my service: the good, the bad, and the deformed.
Maybe I'm an anomaly--ever since I broke my leg at the age of one, I've seemed to have some kind of magnetism for medical problems--so don't let my horror stories scare you off of your own African adventure. It's not you, Senegal, it's me. One of the reasons I can afford to be so nonchalant about all the health issues I've dealt with here is that I've had a lot of strange and confounding things happen to my body throughout my life, and none of them have killed me yet. If that's not cause for optimism, I don't know what is.
The latest? No more of the dreaded staph infection, ALHAMDULILLAH.
But instead, two missing big toenails, the remnants of which conveniently acted as depositories for souvenirs (i.e. pebbles) during our recent hike to the Segou waterfalls outside of Kedougou:
And the removal of a large, asymmetrical, irregularly-bordered mole with varied coloration and a dark center (if I sound like a medical textbook listing warning signs of melanoma, well I guess that's why the Peace Corps wanted me to get it removed right away...):
The removal required--how did I not know this before going in?--seven stitches, but was fairly easy and painless. This doctor actually waited for the anaesthesia to kick in before he started cutting.
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