As I looked back over some recent blogposts, I realized that
I have dwelt a lot on the heavy and sad cases that happen here. Unfortunately,
these stories represent a too common experience here. Pain and suffering are
common. However, I perhaps haven’t reflected the victories as much as I should.
And I tend to pass over the routine care of diseases like hypertension, pneumonias,
and many others that we see and treat every day.
But I wanted to share a few of the victories.
One such was a young man who was admitted for progressive
confusion, weakness, and fevers. By the time of his arrival at our hospital, he
was comatose except for brief periods of agitation. I worried that he might
have come too late, or that if he survived, he would have severe cognitive
impairment afterwards. For days it looked as if I was right as he didn’t change
with our therapy. However, after a week of antibiotics he became less agitated.
On day 10, he was sitting up in his bed. On day 12 I could see the difference
in his eyes, the understanding and light was back. As I sat down on his bedside,
I introduced myself. I relayed that I had been taking care of him for the last
week and a half, but I felt that this was the first day I truly met him. After
that day his improvement was rapid, and he was able to leave the hospital soon
after.

Another night, during a busy call shift, a little boy was
brought into the ER by his parents. His name was John. He had fallen a couple
of meters and hit his head on a rock 10 hours before. Completely limp in his
father’s arms, he didn’t move, even as they placed him on the ER bed and
started an IV. An Xray revealed a depressed skull fracture, the bones of his
skull pushed down into space normally occupied by his brain. We started a few
interventions to try to decrease the pressure in his brain, but discouragement
hung heavy on my shoulders, adding to my weariness. Without much hope, I
gathered the family together to let them know my concern for his prognosis.
They nodded their understanding as I spoke. When I offered to pray, they were
thankful and full of faith, more than I felt capable of at that moment.
With a heavy heart I walked back home. I prayed for John
again as I went to bed, leaving it in the hands of the great Physician. I
didn’t see him the next day, but that evening I found my colleague to ask how
he was, steeling myself for the worst. To my amazement, my colleague had walked
onto the ward that morning to see John sitting up in his bed and eating. The
next day he was walking, and two days after I had feared he would die, John
left the hospital with his family. We truly serve an awesome God.
***
This last Friday I was woken up by a call at 4am. The
delivery room had a pregnant mother whose baby was coming out the wrong way and
the umbilical cord had come out first. This can be devastating because the baby
requires blood from the umbilical cord to breathe, and when it comes out early
it can be compressed and closed off. The nurses couldn’t feel a pulse through
the cord any longer. I hurried to the hospital and when I arrived the baby was
partly out, but the midwife was worried he was stuck. I quickly put on gloves
and rotated the baby just enough to deliver one of the arms and then the other.
The head quickly followed. The baby was purple and not breathing. I had very
little hope since it had been some minutes since the nurses had not felt a
pulse in the cord. But after a minute of providing breaths for the baby, he began
to breathe on his own. He was small, 1.5kg (3.3 lbs.).
The next day I went by, wondering if he would still be alive
in the nursery. He was still there. And the next day and the next. He had very
elevated bilirubin levels (jaundice, when babies turn yellow), but has done much
better than I could have expected.


One last story-this one is also from our labor and delivery
ward. I was called to see a patient who had delivered a baby and developed a
bad tear. I knew immediately that it was bad as I saw the tear had gone through
her rectum. These tears can be very detrimental to patients as they can lead to
fistulas, permanent connections between the two tracts. I have repaired many
bad tears here, but none were even close to this one. I hoped that one of our
surgeons would be available to do it, but two were out of town and the other
was busy. So, I found myself sweating as I sat down to begin. It went slowly,
but thankfully I had some advice from a more experienced colleague, and it came
together well. The next day I was thankful to hear from the patient that she
was doing well. A week later in clinic, she came back to see me. She was very
thankful for the care we had given her and was healing better than we could
have expected.
There are hard moments here, but there are also moments of
thanksgiving and joy. I am blessed to be able to serve here and work with the
people of PNG. Thank you for your support.
A couple updates from my life. Stella continues to grow. She
enjoys eating kaukau, eating rice, eating ham, eating chicken; basically,
anytime she gets to eat is her favorite. Recently, some neighborhood kids have come
over to play with her and everyone has a good time. The kids have also helped
me work in our garden.
In a recent basketball mishap, I suffered an avulsion
fracture of my pinky (a small piece of bone where the tendon connects was
broken off). I will need to be in a splint for 6 weeks, which makes a lot of
things at my job more difficult, but thankfully it was not worse. Please pray
for my recovery.
I enjoyed my time away from the hospital for a week in Dubai
for a conference with Samaritan’s Purse. It was a blessing to have a break and
time to reflect on my time here in PNG.