Hello!

Hello!
My name is Autumn Buzzell and I live and work in Ghana, West Africa with City of Refuge Ministries. Here, I run our school, Faith Roots International Academy, and get to be a part in rescuing and the healing of children who have been trafficked into the fishing trade, orphaned, abandoned, and those who just need a little extra loving. What an amazing gift this life is!

Get Involved

Learn More

Donate

Friday, May 25, 2012

Spider woman

Last week, I woke up with some pretty crazy bug bites on my thigh and one on my forearm.   I just assumed they were a spider bite or something and that they would go away with no problem. 
After a day, the one on my arm had formed a little whitehead, so I pushed it out and then thought that would be the end of it.

But, by Friday, the bite was so infected that it had puffed my arm up.  The whole arm was hot and I was getting nervous.

Here is a very bad phone picture of my swollen arm...you can't really see how big and red it was...but you get the idea
John and Stacy got back that night from the Volta and I showed Stacy the bite, but she wasn't feeling too good (had been pretty nauseated the whole trip back...which is no fun on that trip from the Volta).  And later that night, my arm was getting really sore, so I thought I better check it out in the light of the bathroom, and sure enough a little trail had started creeping up my arm and it was sore all the way up to my upper arm.  Scary!  So, I hollered at John and we sped off to the pharmacy for an anti-biotic. 

I was on the antibiotic for a few days and the swelling and soreness had gone down some, when I decided it would be worth a try to get some of the infection out.  So, I started pressing, and it started draining like crazy.  But, the weird part was, there was this hard thing that started pressing out of the hole...so I got some tweezers and started to pull it out.  Seriously, there was this "thing" in my arm that was about a quarter of an inch long.  I'm guessing it was a larvae of some sort.  When I pulled it out, it left this hole in my arm.  I had to have it bandaged for two days before it stopped seeping and the hole closed up enough to leave it unbandaged.  So gross


The hole that was left when I pulled out the "thing" from inside
After that thing came out, the swelling went down, the soreness left, and now I'm just left with the itchy feeling that comes with healing skin.

As we say here...TIA...This is Africa!  Never thought I'd have some bug planted in my skin...but there you go! 

Sorry if I grossed you out, but you know...this blog is all about life here in Ghana for me...so there's a taste of it! 

When I told the kids that I thought I had gotten bitten by a spider and that it had gotten infected, they started calling me spider woman.  They wanted me to "proove" that I had gotten bitten by shooting webs out of my hands.  Mary Osei said that if she had gotten bitten, she would use the webs to come to my office and take all the crayons and coloring books before I would even know it.  That girl is too funny!

But, this spider woman has no powers...unfortunately!  If had the power to shoot webs out of my hands, I think the kids at school would be a little quieter in their classrooms for fear of the web!  Oh Mary!

2 comments:

  1. Good morning how are you?

    My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.

    I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.

    For all this I would ask you one small favour:
    Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Ghana? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Ghana in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:

    Emilio Fernandez Esteban
    Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
    28902 Getafe (Madrid)
    Spain

    If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.

    Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.

    Yours Sincerely

    Emilio Fernandez

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Emilio,
    I can certainly try to get you one...we don't often head to the post office as we have had SO MUCH trouble with corruption there that we can't get much in or out of the office, but we can certainly try!
    Blessings,
    Autumn

    ReplyDelete