Monday, July 30, 2012

Coincidence.... SURELY not

So, since our little camping expedition , I have been having some issues with a rash. Most of the time I am able to cure this with a little ( or a lot) of gold bond or anti-monkey butt ( and yes, that IS what it is called.)
This time I was having a particularly bad experience. The rash just would not go away.
This weekend we went to Nairobi to pick up a visitor. While we were there I went by the chemist( pharmacy) to see if perhaps they had some Lotrimin or some such thing. They did not.
And so I walked away from the store. The minute I left, I felt compelled to FIND SOMETHING... anything that would work.  I went back to the store. They had Whitfield's ointment.
Now, from my experience with medical clinics, I had seen this used a gazillion times but never knew what it was for. I read the little tube and it said "anti-fungal." Yep... that ought to work.
There was of course no price tag on the tube so since I was in Nairobi I expected to pay an exhorbitant amount ( in the same store, revlon nail polish was the equivalent of $25.
I went to the counter, asked for the tube and the lady said 40 shillings - WOW - about 50cts.
So I took my tube back to the guest house, used it that night and things seemed to be clearing up.
On Monday, we traveled home and stopped by an IDP camp to do a little follow up on water filters we had distributed about 10 days ago. We walked from house to house and from tarped tent to tarped tent.
We were there for about 2 hours or so.
As we were leaving the camp, a mama came with her child and asked if we had anything for her child.
By that she meant the rash on her head. I looked at the rash and recognized it as fungal ( from all my time in triage at clinics, some things you see over and over.) This rash looked like mildew.
Whitfield's - yep- you treat it with Whitfield's.
So now I knew why I had the compulsion a couple of days before.
And so we went to the van, got out my tube and gave the little girl her first does. Our visitor and I washed her head and then applied the ointment.
I pray she is better. Somehow, even without another treatment of my own rash, it seems to be clearing up as well today.

Somehow..... there are no coincidences and I just smile and say Thank you Lord.
s

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