22 Nov Milestones in Mamei Simbo’s Recovery

Billy Simbo, bishop of Sierra Leone Conference, will return to Sierra Leone Monday night, November 22. On Saturday, November 20, he sent this positive report on his wife, Mamei, and her continued recovery after spending three months in the hospital.

Mamei has gone from just making progress to actually recovering from all of the things that have happened to her over the past three months. This week, she reached several key.

The first milestone came on Thursday when the speech therapist cleared Mamei to take liquids by mouth and eating solid food for the first time in over two months. Mamei must have anticipated this by faith, because last Saturday when her cousin, Julie (Beah) Williams was visiting, she told her she wanted Julie to prepare a special kind of rice for her. She told her what sauce to cook with the rice and then Julie was to add some green leaves to the rice to make it slippery. Anyway, today Julie came with the rice and Mamei ate a small portion! The first time she had eaten rice in three months. Now those of you who know us Sierra Leoneans, especially a Mende person, you know that is a long time of suffering.

Her spirits are up, and her speech and thought patterns are much clearer than they were a week ago. She still gets a little confused sometimes, but she can put thoughts together and actively participate in conversations and discussions.

But the biggest milestone came this afternoon. As I sat next to Mamei, she suddenly started to clap.

I turned to her and she was smiling, so I said to her, “What are you so happy and clapping about.” I thought she was clapping to get my attention. But she said to me, “Praise the Lord I am clapping!” Which drew my attention to her raised left hand–the one she did not use or lift up before!

She then said, “My next goal is to be able to walk, and I know that God will help me do it.

It is just remarkable and amazing to see her recover gradually, and it gives us great hope that she will make a full recovery, even her kidneys.

She continues to go for kidney dialysis three times a week, and she is getting better each time in coping with the 3-4 hours of just lying there while the machines do the work of her kidneys. It is usually Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from around 3:45 to 8 PM. We still have not been able to secure someone who will be able to go with her each time.

I expected her to have a hard time with my pending departure for Sierra Leone. But after our initial discussion she has come to appreciate the time I have been able to spend with her and the fact that it is important that I return to Sierra Leone both for the upcoming Conference and to take care of our personal effects at the end of our term of service.

She has been telling visitors about my going back, and everything seems on track. I know it would not be easy saying goodbye when we part Monday afternoon, so that I would get to the airport for my night time flight to London then on to Freetown. But I am leaving very encouraged and at complete peace with the decision to go now instead of later.

There are a lot of out-of-pocket expenses that are part of what the insurance company did not pay for. In almost all cases they paid for 80% of the costs, which leaves us to pay the rest.