Surgery success

Sanibonani, bantfu! (Hello, people!)

I had my surgery yesterday, and they removed the situation causing problems in the ol' baby house. It was a fibroid mass, whatever that means, and they'll biopsy it to make sure it doesn't cause any further issues. Everything went fine. I'm still in Pretoria, and I'll probably be here till Monday. The doctor will check me on Friday to make sure all's well.

I've never been admitted to the hospital for anything, so this was a new experience. It coincides with the new things I do each year for my birthday. Every year, I do a new thing on each day leading up to my birthday. The number of days coincides with my upcoming age. This year, I start today and will have 30 days of new things. See?

I suppose eating hospital breakfast or being discharged from the hospital could be new. The discharge part probably happened about 30 years ago also, though, so that doesn't count.

A few things that surprised me about the hospital stay:

- My name was spelled Myrthle Terryl on the check-in sheet at admissions. Luckily, it was right on my file and everywhere else.

- They make you take a bath using a whole little bottle of soap. I guess that makes sense. I'd showered in the morning, but I'm sure they don't want to do surgery on smelly, dirty people.

- The food was OK. I got to make lots of choices!

- No one ever showed me how to rearrange the position of the bed or call the nurse. That was weird. But there were usually nurses around anyway, so it wasn't a huge deal.

- A lot of people were speaking Afrikaans around me. A few of the nurses translated or at least told me what they were talking about, but most did not.

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Speaking of Afrikaans, Pretoria has the largest population of Afrikaners in the country. This means there are a lot more white folks than I'm used to seeing in Swaziland or even in South Africa. The woman who runs our guest house is Afrikaans, and it's interesting to talk to her about her perspective on the country. It's an interesting place, and race relations are extremely complex.

That's about as far as I'll go there. I need to read more about the history of the country as it moved toward Apartheid. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the fall of Apartheid. Interesting. A lot of terrible and brutal things happened on all sides of that conflict.

That's all for now. Here's hoping I get back to the SWZ soon. I'm already missing Girls Leading Our World camp this week, which is a mega bummer. Such is life.

Salani kahle!