Building Resilience: Life Experience and Perspective

Today I’m grateful for past experience that allows me to keep the current days in their proper perspective. (And for the wonders of a swipe keyboard on a smartphone) Over the past week I’ve fallen twice and broken multiple bones. The first was an accident where I tripped and fell and broke my arm and gave myself a concussion. The second was a fall from the results of the concussion that broke and/or sprained all four fingers on my arm bearing the cast.

I’m frustrated as can be. I’m certainly angry as it has sidelined me from my work and sleep is hard to come by from the pain. But I have had a worse week in the past and it is the only one in my life where I openly welcomed dying. Some of you will recall this.

In 2016 in Bimbilla Ghana I woke up to an incredible pain in my lower back unlike anything I’d been through before. I ran to the bathroom and woke up a few minutes later after passing out from the pain. I knew immediately it had to be a kidney stone.

After walking 200 laps or more around the house the pain hadn’t subsided. I got on my motorcycle and rode the mile into town to Bimbilla hospital. Keep in mind we were in the middle of nowhere in an impoverished region in a developing nation. It was more akin to a civil war field hospital but with concrete and mud brick walls. There are hospitals in the bigger cities—like what most in the western world are used to—but, with road construction at the time, the nearest one was four hours away on motorcycle. Ghana has some very modern things going on far away from the isolated places we were in the north.

I told them it was a kidney stone, and they went with it because they had never had a patient with one before. The doctor for four regions there wasn’t in as he was traveling with the regions he worked daily. I wouldn’t meet him until the next day and, as a result, the facility had only nurses working.

And before I get further, I’d like to point out the care and kindness and love I received from the staff there was tremendous. Honestly it helped keep me going.

They got me an IV line with fluids and antibiotics and put me into one of 3 beds they had in a men’s ward. These beds were from colonial times I’m sure, and the mattresses had coils that poked every part of me. I was hurting so badly I didn’t care at all.

In hindsight I should have tried to get to a more modern facility.

For 5 days I went through excruciating pain because the place I only existed to keep you alive. No narcotics. The doctor would check me in the mornings, and I lay in bed until it was time to try and use the bathroom the rest of the time. Between that I tried to block out the moans of men dying in the beds beside me and the screams coming from the midwife ward outside.

That building for midwives was right beside the small building I was in. We were separated by nothing more than trellised glass windows and a small walkway. The infant mortality rate is severe in Northern Ghana, and I lay there listening to the screams of the women over and over again. Because of that time, I now know the difference between the screams of women giving birth and the wails of those who have lost a child.

On the third day I lay there and said I don’t want to die but if it will stop this pain and these screams I’ll welcome it.

On the fifth day I struggled back to the small restroom where vomit and feces covered the floor. I could hear UB40’s song Red Red Wine in the distance through the window. They’re huge in Ghana.

As the song entered the chorus “Red redddd wiiiine” the stone passed into my bladder and the pain was nearly all gone in an instant. I broke into a cold sweat and my knees buckled in relief. It’s why I jokingly say UB40 is my all-time favorite band now.

I am supremely frustrated today. I need to be out raising funds to keep The Alabama Center for Rural Organizing and Systemic Solutions (ACROSS) going, including the trip to DC this week to lobby for the EPA grants to be implemented. I can’t make that trip now. But also, I can’t do anything else if I’m going to keep falling and hurting myself, so I am going to have to do something from home.

I often say that time in Ghana prepared me for the rest of my life. This is no different and, after that experience of the week from hell, dealing with this is far easier. I passed 7 more kidney stones in 2016 and 2017, but none as bad as the first and none before or since. Apparently, the Ghanaian diet is high in oxalates which are the stones my body produces.

My brother Baako Alhassan was there for me every day then and he is now. He has finally gotten a visa appointment and it’s looking more likely he will make it here to Auburn University. That buoys my spirits.

I tell my crew at ACROSS that resilience isn’t easy. It’s why I don’t get too high, like the SPLC award from two weeks ago, or too low like this past week and the pain I’m in. I just try and keep moving forward.

Like I said at that time in Ghana this will make a good story someday. I mean that not necessarily to entertain but to inform and keep things into perspective. This one is no different. Makes you grateful for the times when things go well that’s for sure.

Here’s to getting better and to needing fewer pieces of hardware to immobilize broken bones.

Forza.

Author’s note: I am pleased to learn there have been a great deal of efforts to upgrade the hospital in Bimbilla since my time there and they recently received awards for their work. In fact, they claim there were zero deaths in the year 2023 out of 1800 births. The staff was and remains the best I have ever dealt with in any clinical setting. It seems they are getting resources and equipment to match their quality as healthcare workers. More on that HERE.