The First 48 Hours

It's nice to be back online! I spend the weekend travelling the country, seeing a few other missions posts, a little sightseeing, and taking care of fellow missionaries who had malaria and dengue fever. Whew! What a weekend!

I got off the boat Tuesday evening on my new home of LaGonave, and we had just arrived on the missions compound, when an urgent need presented itself. One of our sailors was unloading the boat and dropped an oil drum on his finger causing a near amputation. Right away, I hurried over to the hospital to sew it back on.

Yesterday was my day off. I was awoken at 8 am with a knock at the door and the plea for “Mis Diane” (nurse Diane, as I am called here, with the understanding that I am like one of their senior nurses who diagnoses and treats) to come help in the hospital. Many stitches and 3 hours later, I returned back home to spend my day off doing laundry and unpacking.

Today I technically started work.

Today I saw my first AIDS babies… scrawny little scarecrows with sunken eyes and bulging bellies and stick-figure limbs.

Today I saw my first stillborn baby… and the agony on his mother’s face when we told her that he didn’t have a heartbeat.

Today I heard that my first machete-hacked patient from yesterday that we spent 6 hours sewing up died in Port Au Prince.

Today I heard of a seizing mother that we desperately need to do a C-section on to remove the baby but we must wait to do so between seizures.

Today I felt the swollen neck, enlarged to be twice the size of a normal neck, of my first little girl patient with TB.

Before today, I lived in a medical world of plump babies, seizure-free mothers, and little girls who could never even imagine TB. As I write, I am fighting to see through my tears. Each patient has a story, a family, and a piece of my heart. I can only pray for them, serve them with the strength that God gives me, and ask Him to make me a “well-watered garden and a spring whose waters never fail” (Is. 58:11) to meet these unique needs.

And this is only the first 48 hours!