I arrived back to find DeAnna and Jonah and the nurse in the same waiting room; they were waiting for the room to be cleaned. The nurse went and waited in line to put the deposit down on the surgery and we were taken back to the room. CNPS doesn’t accept medical insurance, at least not our “Global” plan or even credit cards.

Overall we were satisfied with the room, the room isn’t going to be winning any awards but it was clean and it even had a T.V. The Cameroonian intern came and told us that Jonah needed to take off his clothes and get ready to go to surgery. No gowns. He checked the bag of supplies we had purchased at the pharmacy, not much just a few IV bags, some bandages, and surgery stuff. So we stripped him down to his underwear and they wheeled him back on his bed to the operating room.

We went with him and we were waiting outside the doors that said Authorized Personnel only for the surgeon and the anesthesiologist to arrive. The surgeon explained to me about his training in Germany and he wanted to make comparisons to the USA and Cameroonian medical care so I politely carried on the small talk with him.  The surgeon asked if either DeAnna or I would like to change into surgical clothes and watch the surgery, we both declined.   Jonah was wheeled off and we went back to his room to wait.

DeAnna’s cell phone battery had died that day so that is one thing I knew I could find someone selling on the street, cell phones. So I didn’t even walk one block before I found a guy that had batteries that would work in DeAnna’s knock-off Nokia. I went back to the hospital and we continued to wait, calling friends to ensure that Joshua would be picked up from school and receiving calls from around the world from friends and family that were praying for Jonah. Some of the texts that were sent arrived a day or two after they were sent.

They finally brought Jonah back to his room and he was still not fully awake but we were told that the surgery went well. A little later he woke up and he asked DeAnna what happened? I left to go get Joshua and bring him back to the hospital so he could see that his brother was OK.

All throughout the night the nurses would come in and tell them that Jonah needed more medicine or something so DeAnna would go down to the pharmacy and purchase something else, unfortunately they are not very good at determining exactly what they need and we now have several extra bags of glucose at home and several other medicines that can only be given through an IV. DeAnna finally told the nurse it will need to wait until tomorrow when she asked where the thermometer is and wanted DeAnna to go purchase one, DeAnna said, “My husband will bring one in the morning.”