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.
