Killer Nose Disease and a Wedding

WARNING:  This first little story is more than a little gross and disgusting.  It's quite graphic, but funny.  If you don't do gross and disgusting then feel free to skip down to the first wedding picture.  It gets better from there on down. 

This is Tanner's nose.  Last week Joy saw bloody stuff oozing out his right nostril.  And pus.  She put some medicine in there.  Next day it was worse.  And smelling bad too. We thought it was a staph infection so went and got some obat (medicine) at one of the local pharmacies (you don't need a prescription here for a lot of medicine if you know what it's called).  So for the next few days Joy faithfully applied topical medicine inside Tanner's infected nose, and made him swallow medicine.  It got worse, not better.

After I got home on Thursday I took a look inside that proboscis of his.  It looked awful!  Deep inside was a strange, spongy-looking, red fleshy growth of some kind, almost entirely closing off his nostril.  And it was obviously infected.  It was also causing him quite a bit of pain.  I had never seen anything like it, and after several days of antibiotics it didn't seem to be improving.  We decided to take him to the doctor.

The next day Joy took Tanner to the local Emergency Room.  The doctor there took a good look inside and was totally perplexed.  He told Joy that he'd never seen anything like it.  He had no idea what to do and told her she had to take him to the Ear Nose and Throat Specialist ASAP!  We didn't even know there was an ENT doctor in Tarakan.  So the next few hours were spent worrying and praying...what on earth could this horrific, bloody, pus-oozing, spongy-looking, tumor thing be, that's so impervious to direct antibiotics???   The worst possible scenarios played out in our minds.

That night while Joy was waiting in the long line to see the ENT, my cell phone rang.  It was Joy.  I expected news...was it good or bad?  "Tanner just told me that last week he bit off a piece of the red, foam, spongy-moose bath toy, and stuffed it up his nose.  He just remembered."  Ummmmmm, he did what????  Not that I would expect anything less from a little mischievous boy.  (You may remember his twin brother, Tyler's, episode with the coin last year?)  Well, a few minutes later and a simple pull from a pair of tweezers and all was well again.  So if you ever have a bad case of proboscis peniculus morbus (from the Latin meaning proboscis sponge disease--yeah, we named it ourselves)  try the ol' tweezers before you head off to the doc!

********************END OF GROSS STORY************************

In other news, Joy and one of her MAF friends, were asked to be in a wedding this week.  Their very good friend, Fatimah, asked them to accompany her in her best friend's wedding.  Fatimah is standing beside Joy on the left. 

A few weeks before the wedding Joy and friend were taken to a penjahit (person who sews) who measured them and then made these beautiful traditional outfits.

Outside the reception hall, there was plenty of activity and good food.

Nearby a guy was selling cheap, lighted toys.  They were blinking and whirring and swirling and generally sucking in children and their parents like black lights suck in bugs at night.  I'm not sure but I think the guy must have made a killing that night!

A few more random shots at the reception.

 

Isn't she gorgeous!?

What do you think their favorite colors are?

These ladies were singing and doing the Emcee thing, and doing quite a fine job if I do say so myself.

Well, there you have it.   A lot more happened this week, but alas, my time for posting is gone, so that's all you get for now.  Thanks for dropping by.