Até Nos Encontrarmos Novamente: Promised Picture Post

So I am continuing to learn about tropical diseases, infections, etc. Good thing Shaun brought a huuuuuge book down called Armageddon Medicine...it's been informative and interesting. I will definitely be doctor-worthy by my return. Anyways, we do have a hospital nearby, but apparently if you want a half-decent doctor you head to Recife, 2 hours away. Hence, the educational literature we stored away in our luggage somehow.

After Seth touched the toads around a week ago, he developed lines on his hands that almost looked like burn marks. Oops, I should back up. I believe in my last post I forgot to mention he had been "peed on" by the toad. So we debated between the "poison" factor, and tried cleaning and bandaging, or that mosquito bites had become infected. Then it started on the bottom of his foot. I was treating it with neomycin. After a few days, it started looking worse. Somehow I ran across a page in my Armageddon book about how a "poison ivy rash" was common with that topical antibiotic. Oh dear, then my theory changed to him having a reaction to it, as the bumps were raised, although narrow. Then the one on his foot developed a red squiggly line up from it. I thought it was weird that it was going up and down, however my theory became one of "blood infection." This seemed to be going from bad to worse. I asked around today, showed a few people, and viola, found out it is no big deal, only hookworm larva crawling around his skin. Disgusting but highly treatable. The medical terminology is cutaneous larva migrans and is mostly caused by playing in dirt that has dog feces in it. Another disgusting factor. We have currently banned our children from playing outside without their sandals. And I headed to the farmacia and picked up some thiabendazole to treat it. At least I hope that was the medication I bought, in Portuguese it was tiabendazol.

In happy news, we headed over to Sandro and Djane's terreino today. These are friends of ours that live in the town of Maragogi, but own a nice parcel of land out in Peroba (the part of Maragogi we live in). He has built a covered patio with a kitchen area and a bathroom, volleyball/soccer nets, there's an outdoor shower, an above ground pool and some hammocks. It's wonderful. Eventually they hope to build there. We enjoyed a churrasco, which is the Brazilian way of barbecuing slowly over a charcoal grill and enjoying a lot of meat over a long period of time. Good times.

And here are finally the promised pictures. It may end up being a ridiculous amount, I still have to go through them. Actually I've decided to do another post with pictures of our house to split them up.