A Bitter Pill to Swallow
Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again. Psalm 71:20 NIV
“Here comes the nurse,” I said to the other three kids at my breakfast table. “I think it’s time for our malaria medicine.” Every week at Kent Academy, the boarding school for missionary children in Nigeria, we each took a pill to prevent malaria, and today was the day.
The school nurse in her white dress and cap stopped beside our table of first and second graders. On the top shelf of her wooden cart stood all sorts of pill containers. In her left hand, she carried a tray of small plastic cups. Each tiny cup held a little, white pill and a slip of paper with a name scribbled on it, and she started with the girl to my right.
When it was my turn, the nurse lifted a cup that included my name, “Debbie Jones.” She smiled and said, “Here’s your anti-malarial.”
I held out my hand and she tipped the medicine into my palm. Taking a mouthful of water, I quickly swallowed the pill.
Once the nurse moved on, my friend looked up from her porridge and said, “The pill I take at home is awfully bitter.” She shook her head and shuddered as if tasting it right then. “But this one isn’t bad at all.”
Daddy’s Advice
I stirred the white breakfast mush around in my bowl. “Same for me. But my dad is smart, and he taught me how to swallow bitter pills.” As I put a spoonful of porridge in my mouth, I thought about Daddy back home. Is he eating breakfast too? Does he miss me as much as I miss him? I wish he could give me a big hug right now.
“Really?” my friend asked. “I didn’t think anyone could take it without tasting it.”
“Well, my dad told me if you put a bitter pill on the back of your tongue, you won’t taste it.” Opening my mouth wide, I shoved my thumb and pointer finger in toward my throat. I gagged, pulled my fingers out, and wiped them on my napkin. “But it’s really hard to do!”
Photo credit Sherry McElheran Bayne
A Necessary Stink
That evening at the end of dinner, the uncle made his usual announcement. “Grades one through five, you’re excused to the playground for a half an hour before you get ready for bed. Grades six through nine, please get ready for study hall in your classrooms.”
My friend and I hurried to the girls’ dorm “I need to get my sweater,” I said.
She held my hand. “I do too, but we have to be sneaky because we’re not allowed to go in our rooms.”
When we got to our room, the door was closed. After slowly pushing it open, we walked into an awful, yet familiar, chemical smell. I held my breath, grabbed what I needed then headed out of the room into the hallway, and pulled the door closed.
We both gasped for air and my roommate said, “At my home, we don’t have to spray because we each have a mosquito net hanging over our beds. It’s hard to get in and out of because the net is tucked around the mattress.”
As we walked down the hall toward the lobby, I said. “Where I live, I don’t have to use a mosquito net, but the medicine we get tastes awfully bitter.”
Then I sighed. I miss Mom and Dad, my little brothers Mark and Grant, and especially baby Cindy. Have they finished eating dinner? Are they thinking about me?
Letting the screen door slam behind us, we headed down the steps to the playground filled with noisy kids.
Once back inside, my friend and I opened the bedroom door slowly and took a big sniff. “The smell isn’t so bad anymore,” I said.
As I lay in bed after lights out, I thought again of my family back at Egbe. Then I remembered the medicine we took that morning. I’m glad the pills here taste okay, but I’d much rather be back home, even though our pills there are bitter.
Looking Back
We lived with the knowledge we could get malaria very easily, but it didn’t seem scary. Some of the anti-malarial pills were very bitter, but others weren’t. Fortunately, the one I took at Kent Academy, Daraprim, was tasteless. However, Nivaquine, the one I took at home, was a variation of Chloroquine and very bitter. MKs might recognize these other names and types of anti-malarial medicines: Plaquenil, Aralen, Camoquine, Paludrine, Quinacrine, and Quinine.
In addition to preventative medicine, some missionaries used mosquito nets at night. Since we didn’t have nets at Kent Academy, they sprayed our rooms every night with a pesticide, then shut the windows and doors while the chemical, probably DDT, did its work. For at least an hour after the spraying was done each evening, we weren’t allowed to enter our bedrooms. That was a good rule, but even so, the smell lingered as we went to bed every night. I didn’t worry about any possible damage to my health, I just thought the smell was annoying.
Over the years, many of us had malaria, possibly because the prophylactic dose wasn’t strong enough, but it didn’t seem any worse than a bad case of the flu, with a high fever and body aches for several days. Nobody got in a big panic over it, because it was just a part of life in the tropics.
What I Know Now
Throughout Africa, malaria is still a problem. UNICEF reports about 1,500 children die every day from Malaria, a disease for which there are known medicines that could mitigate these numbers.
As we Shelter in Place and the medical community strives to find a cure for COVID-19, hydroxychloroquine is being tried. Although it hasn’t gone through randomized clinical trials yet, it seems to be successful in many cases. This made me think of our daily childhood doses and the possible health consequences of long-term consumption. It’s nice to see a short-term dosage of this medication helping people today.
I rejoice when I hear of people who’ve recovered from the virus, of those who still have jobs, and many who can work from home. Yet I grieve for those who have lost loved ones and whose lives are in economic upheaval.
Sometimes God gives us bitter medicine. The current shutdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus feels like a bitter pill we are having to swallow now. God allows us to endure difficult things in this sin-affected world, but in the midst of them we learn perseverance and discover what is truly important in life. We often experience comfort from friends and help from the most unexpected places. Additionally, I think because I learned how to bear difficulties at a young age, I’m less anxious and perhaps better equipped to deal with the situation we’re all in now.
However, sometimes difficulties can drag on for years and feel impossible to overcome. I’m learning that even in the scariest moments, I can trust in a loving God because he is enduring the pain right along with me. And he promises to restore my life in the end.
When I read my Bible, especially in the Psalms, I take great courage from God’s many promises to be with me whenever, wherever, and in whatever situation I find myself. Then I share those thoughts with my husband, friends, and family and I get more encouragement and inspiration from their support. Through our conversations, I feel God’s love for me and receive confirmation of the direction I should go.
As I learn to trust implicitly in God’s infinite wisdom, I find peace instead of panic, faith instead of fear, and strength instead of stress.
A Story from a Friend
I’d like to share with you a short story written by a friend from Kent Academy days, David Spady. He posted this to Facebook on April 2, 2020:
In 1969 my mom was a nurse at a hospital in Nigeria when a new deadly virus showed up. It quickly began to take many lives including Dr. Jeanette Troup, who worked with my mom and delivered my brother.
Lassa Fever was named after a village in Nigeria where it was first discovered. There was no cure until a nurse who worked with my mom, Penny Pinneo, survived the disease after nine weeks in the hospital with a temp of 107 degrees.
A sample of Penny’s blood was sent to Yale University, where Dr. Jordi Casals was able to create a serum to treat the virus. He ended up with Lassa Fever in the process but was able to survive thanks to Penny’s blood.
Penny’s story was told in many newspapers and in the 1974 novel, Fever!, A fascinating book about a deadly virus and how it was brought under control. (BTW – there are more cases of Lassa Fever today in Nigeria than there are COVID-19.)
Link It to Your Life
What is your greatest fear at this moment? Who can you share it with to find comfort, assurance, and even some guidance?
Think about a time in the past that was very dark, yet someone reached out to you, or God brought a ray of hope. Share that story with a trusted friend today, via phone call or video chat.
Father, the past few months and weeks have been filled with anxiety and our lives turned upside down. Thank you that we can trust you are sovereign over this world and lovingly in control. Help us reach out and find comfort in friends and family around us. Amen.
8 thoughts on “A Bitter Pill to Swallow”
Thanks for sharing these stories. They were enlightening. Many blessings to you!
I’m so glad we connected via Instagram! Your encouragement on my writing means so much to me, Boma. God bless you as you continue to share your encouragement through your blog. I loved your post titled Sincerely, Mother! You had a very interesting journey to self-publishing your first book in Nigeria.
I have some of Dr. Jeanette’s Pogo books. She and my Dad both loved Pogo and somehow he was the recipient of a stack of Pogo books after she died. Another interesting tidbit is that I nearly died from cerebral malaria when I was about two years old. My family had to come home to the States so I could be treated.
Your comment about our childhood experiences equipping us to deal with unusual circumstances today made me think of a conversation I had with my sister. Both of us thought that grocery shopping after people started stockpiling foods during this lockdown situation was strangely familiar. You couldn’t go to the store with plans for a specific meal and count on getting all the ingredients. Instead you go and see what meat is available, and plan around that on the fly, seeing what other ingredients you can get. I’m pretty sure this is the way we shopped growing up in Nigeria where there weren’t shelves full of twenty different varieties of every food. It’s a new experience for people who grew up in this country, but I found it pretty easy to adapt.
Liz, I remember that collection of Pogo books! You and Becky used to read from them and laugh so hard. I loved it when you shared the comics with me, but I didn’t always catch on, sadly. I think it helped the more you read to me and the more familiar I became. That’s so great to know he got them from Dr. Jeanette!
Your story about the grocery store, empty shelves, and building meals on the fly around what we could find is so familiar! In Nigeria, the store shelves were always half empty. Yes, this “unprecedented time” here in America is actually very familiar because we lived through something similar, didn’t we?!
This brought back many memories. Dr. Jeanette delivered my younger sister. We loved Dr. Jeanette! Lassa was one of our stations. We knew the people who first got this terrible disease. I bought the book, FEVER, back in the 70’s.
Wanda, I had no idea you knew Dr. Jeanette! You have such a connection to her, to Lassa, and to Nigeria. Where was your sister born? I’ll have to ask my mom if it was Dr. Jeanette who delivered my younger sister. But that was at Jos.
I was hospitalized in Kano during my freshman year at Hillcrest. Dr. Jeanette was my doctor there, and 9 days after she treated me, she died. So, although I had a combination of malaria and an amoeba that made me seriously ill, and did NOT have Lassa fever, it was suspected that I did and that she had contracted it from me. They did a series of tests to be sure I did not have antibodies to the disease in my blood, and while they did those tests, my entire dorm was quarantined.
It had all started during chapel on Sunday. I was standing by Miss T, sharing a hymnbook, and I remember thinking she had such a shaky voice that the hymnbook was trembling and i could not read it. Then she suddenly said, “Sit down and put your head between your knees!” (A very odd thing to do during Sunday morning service, I thought.) Then my house father, Bob Webb, came and carried me out of the auditorium, in front of the whole school. I was mortified. They put me to bed in the dorm, but by that afternoon, my fever was over 106, so they took me to the hospital. I remember that Dr. Jeanette was gentle and kind. I was in a delirious fever for several days, but every time I woke up, either she or my housemother was there at my bedside.
Thanks for sharing this wonderful story of your experience. It sounds like a horrible journey, and I’m glad it wasn’t Lassa fever. I’m so thrilled to hear every time you woke up, either Dr. Jeanette or your housemother was at your side. I loved Dr. Jeanette too and she died far too soon. At least we know she didn’t contract Lassa fever from you. It’s so great to hear this side of the story!