Guitar Picture From Camp Good News

Carissa (a camper from Camp Good News) just sent me this picture of me playing the guitar outside the COW (Chapel On Wheels) at Camp Good News. I thought it was a pretty good picture. Mainly because you can't really see my face. ha ha.

Gallstone Symptoms?

Well, you'd probably think that once I spent a night in the ER, and was told I had gallstones, I would immediately go online to find out everything I could about them. Actually, though, since I've been at camp, my time online has been fairly limited, and when I've been home, I've had too much to do to spend much time browsing the internet.

But I spent a couple nights at home this week, so I finally got around to looking up gallstone symptoms. What I read made me realize, I've probably been suffering from gallbladder attacks since sometime last winter, and never realized it.

Turns out that, in addition to pain in the abdomen, gallbladder problems can also produce fever and chills. So all those times last winter and spring that I was down with stomach flu (fever, chills, stomach cramps) - in retrospect, I suspect that I was experiencing gallbladder attacks, and it was not stomach cramps I was feeling! I commented to a few people (and a few people made similar comments to me) that I was having a rough winter/spring because I kept coming down with every bug that was going around.

The scary thing is that when gallbladder attacks are accompanied by fever and chills, that's when you're supposed to contact your doctor immediately, because it can mean that bile is getting backed up in the liver. So I probably spent a better part of my winter/spring teetering on the edge of jaundice and didn't even realize it.

No wonder I've felt exhausted all the time - probably had as much to do with my health as the work load I was trying to keep up with...

All those times in praise team practice when Rachel looked at me and said "Are you okay?" And I said "I'm just really tired..." it was probably a bit more than that...

My attack I had at camp was far more severe in pain, but had no fever/chills symptoms. Now I understand why the doctor told me that if I had additional symptoms I should come right back to the ER.

The other interesting thing I found is that gallbladder attacks can produce a pain not in your side, but in your back - either between your shoulder blades, or under your right shoulder. And now I remember a month ago thinking that I'd pulled a muscle in my back...now I'm not so sure that's what happened...

Friday morning I went to the hospital (scheduled trip this time!) for an ultrasound. The technician couldn't discuss with me what she was seeing, so don't ask me about the test results - I won't know until next week. But once I get those test results, we should be able to schedule my surgery. Hopefully that will be soon. Everyone who has had their gallbladder removed has said to me: "You won't believe how much better you'll feel once it's gone!"

I'm looking forward to that!

On a completely different subject, I had a really great week at camp. I so much enjoyed the group of campers. They were attentive in chapel, and grateful and appreciative. And a lot of fun. One of the "tribes" practically adopted me, which was nice...even though they kept calling Jeorge a PARROT, instead of a dodo bird!

Home For A Short Time...

Well, I'm back home (briefly!) This morning I need to do some laundry, take a trip to the dump, and some shopping (kind of weird to be doing grocery shopping during the summer...normally, since I'm just home on the weekends, I have enough stuff in my cupboards to make it through the summer...but this whole thing of bringing my own food to camp with me is just one more preparation that I need to do each weekend.)

Then this afternoon (or evening - I'm not sure which) I'm taking some of our youth group teens to the movies. I'm looking forward to that! Of course, those turkeys (ha ha...I'm just kidding, in case you read this Erica, Lindsay and Alex!) have already seen the movie, but I guess I can forgive them for that. ;)

For anyone who is interested, here is a hike report: Blueberry Mountain Hike Report. I was going to hike this with Brian and his family, but I got to camp and found out that it was actually part of the camp activities, so I ended up doing it Monday morning with campers, instead of Thursday afternoon with Brian and crew. I was kind of sad I didn't get to see the Kingfield crew, but at least I did get to see them this summer when I went to the Kingfield Pops concert!

It was nice to see Miss Kay (Karolyne) who was a counselor at Blueberry Mtn, and who I hadn't seen in quite a while. It was also nice this week to meet "Uncle Dave", and pray with him each morning for the camp, the staff, and the campers.

Tomorrow morning I'm at Carthage, and then I head to Camp Berea!

Oh! One more thing I forgot to mention - the missionary speaker at camp was Lura Bodwell, who worked with the Fulani people in Nigeria. This was particularly interesting to me because Rita Salls worked with the Fulani in Niger. And...Lura knew Rita. It was really nice to chat with her, both about missions in Africa and about the things we were going to be teaching - there were several times during the week that our lessons overlapped, or talking with her helped me figure out some ideas about how I wanted to teach a particular lesson.

Teamwork is such a great thing!

Okay, and one more thing...a couple of the campers told me that they have older brothers/sisters whose math teacher is...Mr. Twitchell!

A Little Bit About My Week at Fairhaven Camp

Well, I got back last night from Fairhaven. It was an interesting week. It's an entirely different experience from the other camps I go to. Partly because I get to spend so little time with the campers. Partly because such a large percentage of the campers don't really know much about the Bible.

And, on top of my gallbladder stuff, there was a bug going around at camp, which everyone was coming down with...and I got it. So I spent a good part of Thursday in bed, and missed being able to go on their hike/cookout with them, and didn't get to do chapel with them.

I think being sick caused my gallbladder to act up a little bit...I wasn't in pain, exactly, but it was kind of like my gallbladder was saying to me: Hey Doug! I'm still here!

But on Friday I was feeling better, and was able to go to the beach with them, which was loads of fun. Especially building a sand castle, complete with moat, welcome center and gift shop, outlying villages, and (of course!) an outhouse!

Anyway, we had two or three salvation decisions this week among the teens, and except for Wednesday night, the teens were quite attentive in chapel, and fun to teach. (Wednesday night they played Capture The Flag, but only got to play for about twenty minutes, so they still had a lot of adrenaline rushing through their systems, and were nearly impossible to teach!)