Curing a case of African Blogger’s Bottom

Warning: Do not read this post if you are prone to squeamishness.

Out of the goodness of my heart I passed on some sage advice to my Albert-Schweitzer-wanna-be friend in a post called How to preach in French. He wrote back with gratitude for all the comments from readers. In addition he diagnosed a nasty itchy rash I’ve had as:

… a high likelihood of being a “cercarial rash”, nomenclature due to the large number of cercariae of schistosoma mansoni entering and burrowing under your skin, vying for access to your lifeblood, rushing downstream to your lungs, hoping to be coughed up from thence, swallowed, pass through the gut to the mesenteric system, enter your liver, theretofore setting up residence and perpetrating all kinds of heartache and trauma.

Now I don’t know about you but when I read something like that I tend to start itching all over. And very often I start getting my mental house in order because I’m quite sure that within minutes I am going to die. My wife, however, is no help in these situations. Rather than being a tender-hearted “Florence Nightingale” sort of wife, she is more like the “You are such a pathetic hypochondriac stop your whining” kind of wife. I think it’s because her parents were medical people. When your Dad is a family physician and your Mother is an emergency room nurse you tend to not get much sympathy for your boo-boos.

Living in Africa gives you the opportunity to experience personally an endless variety of weird rashes and stomach ailments. And what makes it even more exciting is that you usually don’t have a doctor within a hundred miles who can help you. If Mango Fly larvae have burrowed under your skin causing little bumps that hatch when you scratch them you just have to deal with it as best as you can. I understand that when Job was afflicted with painful sores all over his body he used a piece of broken pottery to scratch himself. He also sat in ashes. I haven’t tried these methods but have found that a rough brick wall is an excellent place to soothe the itch of athlete’s foot. And although I’ve never done it personally, some people take a bath in oatmeal when they are itching.

If you have lived in rural Africa you have probably come across the book Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook by David Werner. It will help you diagnose scabies, Nairobi eye, jock itch, monkey-bean contact dermatitis and many, many other ailments, all of which I am now suffering from I’m almost certain. It comes complete with illustrations of people’s unseemly members either infected, swollen, stabbed or on the verge of falling off. Much like Jerome K. Jerome in Three Men In A Boat, the more I read this book the more I’m certain that I have every disease in it with the possible exception of housemaid’s knee. Well, as my doctor friend said in his little medical missive, “the earth is a spinning graveyard.” The only question is how do we manage to stay alive long enough to fill a good sized coffin?

I am also certain I am not suffering from pinworms. These little buggers are easy to diagnose by a maddening itch in a certain region downstairs. The best way to check for them is to shine a flashlight on the offending orifice at night. They will then come out of hiding, wiggling like teenagers in a mosh pit. When I first heard about this ailment and its diagnosis, I prayed, “God, just take me home. I am not prepared to shine a flashlight on other missionaries’ nether regions.”

The good news is that just now I received a follow-up message from my friend in which he says, “Sorry Dave went a bit crazy on the schisto thing; no that doesn’t sound like it.  I would think of allergic reaction or possibly scabies…” Then he asks this very intriguing question: “Is there a seat you sit in for hours blogging?” Aha! So there we have it. I’m suffering from an extreme case of “African Blogger’s Bottom!” In order to be cured I will now have to blog naked while standing up. “Alistair” also suggested that I send him a photo for him to publish on his blog of the affected area. Instead I thought I would publish a photo right here:

Image courtesy of Jim West

Gruesome, isn’t it?