Back in the Saddle Again

July 17, 2024 Coming Back 

It is always a joy to be back home in Africa, to drink fresh passionfruit juice, to hear the robin chat “chat, chat, chattering” in the evening, and to re-connect with friends and colleagues.  I hear and see things with new eyes.  Africa is a sensory experience.  It is like plunging in a cold pool and immediately swimming a work-out.  It is all-engrossing and a shock to the senses.  I live in a place where children come to the hospital barely holding onto life.  This last week a now orphaned toddler died several months after being discharged from the outpatient nutrition program.  It is just heart-wrenching.  It is a place where life and death come to the forefront.  Our province runs out of essential medicines to treat perinatal HIV and tuberculosis.  We are currently in this situation.  Even among animals….life hangs in the balance.  Last Sunday we rescued our friends’ young kitten as a falcon repeatedly swooped down to try to kill it.  

 

There is no air conditioning, just the wind and setting of the sun.  We do not have a dishwasher and there is no grocery store to buy pre-pared food.  Beans get served in different forms until they are finished.  All food is fresh.  Everything takes a bit longer, especially cooking.  It is a different rhythm and it takes a good week or two to get re-acquainted with life.  On the equator the sunset is at 6:30pm, so most outdoor activities need to be completed by this time.  

 

Everyday life is more work, life and death are at the forefront, but somehow life is invigorating and there is joy in the simple things.  If you are tired you rest.  If it rains you plant.  

 

A New Solar System 

Currently Warren and Dr. Bob Spencer are preparing the installation of a new solar battery system for the hospital.  This has been about a 5-year project between all the challenges we have faced in recent years from lacking certain components, Ebola, and insecurity.  We are hopeful that this will bring us back to where the hospital needs to be from a power and oxygen perspective.  There really is a need for biomedical equipment expertise here.  We are preparing for a couple of electrical engineers who will come out next week to finish the work.

 

A Rabbit House  

   

We are officially (or unofficially) raising rabbits!  On last count we have 9 babies and 5 adults.  As it turns out rabbits need a very clean living environment and love all “root based” vegetables and accompanying greens.  Sweet potatoes and carrots are their favorites!  We are finishing our very first rabbit house with different rooms that is well aerated.  It seems a bit fancy!

 

Summer Break   

Emmanuel loves summer break!  He has been hard at work with his friends on a treehouse with accompanying moat (for protection from unwanted guests).  We have been reading, playing outside in water, riding bikes, and adventuring together.  He has a great imagination and is learning problem-solving skills.  Homeschool starts in about a month and we are looking forward to a great year!

 

Medical Challenges

 

Today I could not find an infant nasogastric tube anywhere!  I had 3 babies in the ICU that needed one.  This is not a new problem of course.  I found an old bag of feeding sets that we will never use and started to disassemble one to see what I could jerry-rig together.  After cutting a few tubes, re-shaping some rubber pieces, I had found a way to make two feeding tubes from each set.  Somehow this represents many things: lack of resources, on-going need, the need to look past the challenges and tendency to say “there simply aren’t any” and simply a desire to make things work.

 

One of my 1.5year-old kids has a cyanotic heart condition called coarctation of the aorta. His pulmonary artery and aorta are switched, bypassing the lungs to oxygenate the blood.  It is a very serious situation and he lives with an oxygen saturation between 30-50% all the time and is generally irritable.  He is simply not growing.  This condition is usually surgically corrected in the first weeks of life.  There is very little that we can offer in this environment other than managing his heart failure and giving them a diagnosis.  It is hard to know if there is more that we should do.  Is he a candidate for surgery?  If so where?  Families understand that surgery is not available in the country and have an easier time accepting this.  I usually have at least a couple of babies with various heart malformations that I am following in the community.

 

Ministry   

I am thankful that I can use my medical skills in the direct care of patients.  Everyday I have the opportunity to ask people how I can pray for them and share the hope that I have in Jesus Christ.  So many people are spiritually lost, looking for answers, making idols to worship.  It is my prayer that the Lord will give me spiritual insight to the situations we face.

 

There is a beautiful lady from the forest who was brutalized, injuring her and cutting her ear off.  It hits close to home to see people suffering in this way.  Our colleague Dr. Peter has been faithfully tending her wounds, doing a skin graft, and showing love in tangible ways.  Sometimes we hear afterwards about spiritual growth in peoples’ lives, but it is often through suffering that God reaches people.  

 

There is no place that we can go to escape the presence of God, “If I say, Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night all around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”  Psalm 139 11-13.

 

As physicians we can appreciate how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  It is an honor to care for people, and see how God made them.  As a surgeon Warren often says that he can modify and remove things from the body, but he can not add anything back.  How simple and yet how profound!

 

We appreciate your prayers as we continue to adjust and adapt to being back in eastern Congo!  -Pray for a hospital staff member who is struggling with a serious health problem.

-Pray that we would be able to finish the work on the new solar system and that this will help many people.

-Pray that we would see the spiritual needs around us and encourage staff members to pursue a deeper walk with the Lord.

 

 

Lindsey (for us)