The Kenya Trauma

Sometimes when I tell people our travel plans, they get a look in their eyes. A look of doubt or judgment or something that tells me that they think I’m bonkers.

Guys, I’ve been traveling internationally with my kid since she was 2 months old. I see the looks, and I just think, “Hmm…they sure are missing out!” When my kid was a newborn, I noticed the doubtful judgmental looks and they gave me pause. They led me to over-research. They led me to think I might be doing things wrong. But…after I successfully completed that trip, I realized something: I know myself and my kid, and traveling is one of the best things for us.

So, we travel, and we ignore the looks.

One of the destinations that led to the doubtful/judgmental looks was Kenya. Sometimes it wasn’t just looks. Sometimes people told me that going to Kenya sounded scary. To be honest, I couldn’t figure out what others were scared of. I planned to travel with guides when needed for safety, and I told Saign that under no circumstances would I be getting in a car in Kenya with him driving. I knew some would be worried about gaining medical care in a third world country, but this didn’t worry me. When it comes to adventures, I tend to think of things in the most dramatic terms, so in my mind either my kid would be fine or she’d be near death. If near death, I figured she’d get airlifted to Nairobi and get the medical care she needed, and all would be well. I didn’t think about the in-between. You know, medical needs that are in between no-need-for-medical-care and airlifted-because-we’re-saving-her-life. It was the in-between that happened one day while out on safari. Here is that story.

Because L was only 3 at the time, for a few hundred extra dollars we hired a private safari rather than going in a big group. That meant it was just us (Saign, L, and I) and our driver/tour guide. We figured that doing this would protect others from L’s potential whining or crying. So, off we went.

One day, we were in a rural town getting into the safari vehicle after eating lunch. Our guide flipped up a seat in the vehicle so that L could climb in. When she tried to climb in, she grabbed onto a bar on the bottom of the seat and essentially clipped the tip of her thumb halfway off as her thumb got stuck in the latch. At first I thought it was just bleeding, and I brought her into the restaurant to grab some napkins. While there, a waiter pointed out that I had left a long trail of blood behind us.

It was then that I realized that she was really hurt. I looked closer at her thumb and realized that I could kind of flip the tip of her thumb halfway off.

That did not seem good.

I rushed out to the vehicle and told our guide that we needed to go to a doctor immediately. Another tourist came by and told me she was a doctor and took a look. She told me that L would need to have stitches, and that she might lose her nail, but that she would be fine. I thanked her and asked her what kind of doctor she was. “A gynecologist.” She told me.

Our driver drove us to the clinic. It was literally across the street. I could have walked there. It was a building about the size of my living room and dining room combined (e.g. not big). There were no windows. I walked into the clinic and there was a small waiting room area, about the size of a large coat closet with a bench on each side. My kid was crying and we were both covered in blood, and I took a seat with the other patients.

Our guide followed us in and said something in swahili. The other patients waved him towards a door to our right, and he knocked on it. Someone came to the door, and he pointed at us and spoke to the person; then there was some sort of chatter between the guide and the other patients. Then our guide explained that the other waiting patients agreed to let us go in first.

There I was, a mzungu in a room full of Kenyans being given priority. I felt simultaneously like a jerk and like I absolutely needed to take priority as my child was the only one in the waiting room dripping blood. I am so grateful for all of the people for letting us in.

Soon enough, we were ushered through the door my guide had knocked on, to a somewhat long and cluttered room and then back to a small dirty exam room. We were directed onto an exam table and given a dirty blanket (for comfort I suppose, but it was hot, so I remember just sweating all over the place with that dirty blanket on my lap and my child on the blanket).

The doctor walked in, and I can’t really describe exactly what happened. I looked into her eyes and relief filled me. I trusted her.

The doctor explained that she would inject some sort of numbing agent into L’s thumb and then sew it back on; and I suppose that is what happened. But…it was not easy. A common thing I hear from the parents of my cancer patients is the guilt they feel as their kid shouts and screams in fear as they’re getting their port accessed. I didn’t really understand that guilt until that day. The blood curdling screams. My child shouting at me and begging, “Mommy, Mommy, she’s hurting me. Don’t let her hurt me!” While I held her still and sang to her and tried to calm her, but to no avail. It seemed like getting that thumb sewed back on took and excessive amount of time. The whole time I kept thinking, “We’re here because of me. This is why normal people don’t bring their children to third world countries.”

The doctor did a crap job sewing her thumb back on. It looked lopsided and terrible (and fun fact: It still does!) But still, I was grateful for the medical care. After sewing the thumb back on, she wrapped it in gauze. Then she got a bottle of antibiotics that had to be diluted with water. The water she got from a dispeser in the clinic; It was then that I realized that there was no running water in the clinic.

I asked her the cost of the care. It was $7. I think I gave her $50 and told her I hoped it would help other children. She told us to visit a doctor to examine the wound again in 3 days.

Oh, the trauma.

We got into the car and L continued to cry to the point that we took her out of her carseat (keep in mind, this is Kenya where a carseat is not the norm), and she fell asleep in Saign’s arms. She didn’t want to be near me; I assume because I was the one who held her down while the doctor traumatized her. After she fell asleep I suddenly realized: I was not sure if the doctor used a clean needle. Saign reassured me that she had taken the needle out of a new package, but then he reminded me that the conditions were not sterile. The needles were clean, but the syringe was placed into an open bottle of medicine, not injected through a stopper after the stopper had been cleaned like we would have done in the States.

I was terrified. Had I just exposed my child to a bloodborne pathogen?

I prayed. What else can you do in a circumstance like this? I couldn’t fix it. I could just give her her antibiotic and pray.

I googled care for wounds and stitches because we had been given minimal instruction by the doctor. That’s where I read that the bandage should be replaced every day. We stopped at a pharmacy to pick up supplies including painkillers and gauze and tape, but there was no non-stick gauze to be found. Y’all. I’m telling you, 4-5 pharmacies and no non-stick gauze. I usually travel with a first aid kit, but in this case had packed just a few bandages because I knew we’d be traveling with guides. Surely every tour company would require their vehicles to have first aid kits, right?

Y’all. Not in Kenya.

How foolish of me.

It ended up being a bit of a disaster. We first tried to take the gauze off the day after the injury. It was terrifying for us. L was screaming; it was obvious we’d rip the wound open if we pulled it off. Saign happened to look outside the window of the hut we were staying in while we were trying to re-dress the wound and he saw the gynecologist who was there at the original injury (their safari seemed to be following the same route as ours). I encouraged him to go ask her what to do. She was also married to a doctor. They looked at L’s thumb and advised us to just leave it alone. They told us the wound would scab and that then we could take the dressing off in a few days.

We thanked them and went with their plan. We left the bandage on until she returned to the doctor 3-days post-injury. Saign took L to that exam, so I don’t know exactly what happened. I think there was screaming and terror, and her thumb nail was pulled off. It was then covered with some gauze…you know, the sticky kind.

Oh, it was a disaster. You see, logic and google convinced us that we would need to clean the wound daily. But first, we had to figure out how to get the bandage off which was now essentially glued to her nailbed, since it had been placed on an open but healing wound. We did wait a day or two, because we were terrified. Ultimately, Saign called his aunt (an RN) who advised us to get some hydrogen peroxide. We were able to find that. We soaked L’s thumb for 20 minutes and it bubbled and bubbled and finally allowed us to remove the gauze without hysterical screaming.

Oh, but remember: Non-stick gauze was still not available in Kenya. Thankfully, I had packed some band-aids. I made it a nightly ritual to cut down two bandaids so that I could cover L’s nailbed with the non-stick gauze portion of the bandaid, and then wrap the sticky gauze around her thumb and hand to keep it all in place. We got saran wrap to wrap it in when we went to the beach.

She survived.

We survived.

Her thumb is still messed up. (It’s large and mildly lopsided and can’t fully straighten; It’s really pathetic when she tries to give a thumbs up).

This trip was L and Saign’s first time on safari and first time in Africa. There were many good, beautiful moments. I’m grateful for the time we had. But, I do finally understand why others are afraid to bring their children to 3rd world countries. Will I do it again in the future? Yes. But, not to Kenya. Kenya and I need a break from one another for the time being.

I now reliably bring a first aid kit with us whenever we travel.