"The Mystery" !!!

   This morning when Anita and Rhoda came to the clinic there was a gentleman waiting for them by the name of Christian Gabriel. Hmmmmm, don't often hear that name.
   What we could gather from his wife and those with him, he had fallen on Saturday night sometimes, details are few because no one seemed to know where and how and why he fell. They also told us that they left at 2:00 AM this morning and got here at 7:00, so they had quite a ways to walk and it sounded like they didn't have any road except a trail to walk on.
    The obvious symptoms though, are that the left side of his head and his left hand are a swollen and bruised. What the nurses can't figure out is why he is going in and out of consciousness, and although he appears to be sleeping peacefully he is actually unconscious.
   Pastor Levy stayed here over night, (he lives in Ti-Goave) and is now getting ready to head back to town, so Anita is getting Christian ready for a rough and tumble ride to the hospital where they are able to perform more tests and hopefully diagnose the problem.

Christian and his wife by his side.

  
  

More sweet babies

Baby boy 6 lbs 3 oz, born at 3 am Friday

Baby girl 6 lbs 3 oz, born 1:20 am Saturday

The tired nurses with the little girl

Baby girl 6 lbs 12 oz, born 4 pm Saturday

Now if you noticed the times, we had 3 babies born at the clinic in a 37 hour time period.

The first baby was born at 3 am Friday.  Since we were short staffed for clinic on Friday, Rhoda and I still had to go to clinic even though we were up a lot of the night.  Of course we thought we'd catch up Friday night and then we'd have Saturday to sleep in.  :-)  Our plans were altered as a second lady came in during clinic Friday.  We were awake a lot of the night, the baby finally came at 1:20 am.  We were SO glad it was Saturday, and headed off to our beds at about 3 am.  To our shock by 9:30 Saturday morning there was yet a third knock on the gate saying a 3rd lady in labor had come to the clinic.  We monitored her throughout the day, and baby was born by 4 pm.

The nurses better get some sleep now before they are sick and needing help!!!

Who'd have thought?

Who would have ever thought you could do this:  Fall off your horse, cut open your eye lid, slice your bottom lip, scrape up your top lip, AND, get this:  Disconnect your bottom lip from your gums/jaw inside.  You can see all the way down in between his lip and gums (you can't see the bottom). We sent him to Ti-Goave for further treatment.

The Cry of the Abandoned, Can We All Hear The Cry????

                                                                                                   

Jistin's Story

Here is a sad story and I will try share it even though our hearts are hurting and feel very heavy for this little man.

   Jistin, (Name given by Vicson, the caretaker.) is between 18 and 20 months old, this morning at 9:30 his dad came and rattled the clinic gate and Vicson, the young man you see sitting beside Jistin, who is also the gate gaurd at the clinic today opened the gate, and dad and son came through, dad told Anita that he wants his little boy's back checked out because he figured there is something wrong with it since the little boy couldn't walk yet.

   Anita then told him to fill out a (dossier) in order for him to be seen and all the information could be taken, that is when the dad went to Vicson at the gate and told Vicson that he doesn't have any money and asked if he would take care of the boy until he got back with money. He had told Vicson that he is going to Granfon which is about 30 minute hike or so. But hours went by and nothing happened, the little chap hasn't cried at all, around 3:30 Vicson came over to the base and as you see on the picture they are eating some food.

   This little man was shovelling rice as quickly as he could process it in his mouth, he was quite hungry. Brought tears when I watched him pain stakingly pick up all the rice that fell on his shirt and onto the bench.

   So now what? Where does a person turn to in a situation like this? What would you all do? I beg that you would all gather together and plead with God for wisdom.

   Vicson is 22 years old, a friend of mine, his wife is 27 years old and they have a little 2 month old baby themselves, but he said that he is responsible for it because he agreed to take care of him, so he will go and talk to his wife about the matter and if she agrees they will go talk with the area judge (Kazak) and he will issue them a paper that it is legal for them to keep the child and look after it, waiting, hoping and praying that the dad will return. Please also pray for Vicson and his wife that they would agree to take care of Jistin for now and also wisdom how to deal with him if it happens that they need him for a while.The dad isn't known to us and neither does he live in the area, we don't know either if Jistin has a mom. I again beg with you that you plead with God together that he would soften the dads heart and come back for the Jistin.

   I will try to keep you posted as much as is possible. Remember that God knows the situation but we need to talk to Him about it in order for Him to give us an answer.                       Jonathan

Hurry, Hurry

     Supper is just finished, and I'm thinking of spending a night with the other girls, when I hear Anita calling me to go with her to the clinic. Not thinking that anything much is up, I didn't even grab a scrub top.
    We saw a couple ladies, one in labor, and a man waiting for us outside the gate. We said some polite little hellos to them, and then told them they can follow us to the clinic.  Nothing appeared just too urgent. Then we picked up a nice little trot and headed for the clinic ourselves. Suddenly the little man came puffing up to us and told us the lady couldn't come right now. We didn't think a whole lot of it, figuring she would rest a bit, and soon join us.
   "Probably the baby will come at four o'clock tomorrow morning," we told each other.
   But before we could enlarge on the subject too much, the little man came puffing up again. "The baby is on the ground!"

   Now fast action was needed. We had a very adrenaline packed hour ahead of us. We quickly finished our entrance to the clinic, grabbed gloves and a few other needed articles, and raced back out.  When we got to them, the mother smiled courageously at us, and the baby cried. Both were good signs. After caring for the both of them, we tucked them in for the night, and smiled as we walked away from the clinic, shaking our heads.

   "Hopefully, we will be sleeping at four o'clock now," we thought."Since this is really making our life easier, maybe we should tell all the ladies to have their babies outside!"

    Do you want to hear about our bad leg day, too? Poor Mis Leda. She got in for it this time. Our whole clinic smelled like something was wrong with that leg. As you can see, it is. A big infection. Since the initial cleaning, the man keeps returning on a motorcycle to get new bandages.

By the look on his face, you can tell he doesn't enjoy the ordeal

Mis Leda cleaning the leg--donning a mask to help with the smell

The leg, looking better already

   On that same day, Anita spent a lot of time stitching on a big cut on another man's leg. Poor man. He sat there, basically quiet as we picked and picked tiny little rocks out of the big cut. When Anita finished stitching him up, he slowly limped down the road, walking alone to his home. I sat there watching him hobble away, and wishing I could offer him my moto. But I don't have one.
   
 

   

A Few Pics

This young boy came in and could hardly swallow.  Under his chin was very swollen.  We put him on IV antibiotics and sent him home the next day doing much better.

After delivering twins, this lady was carried into the clinic.  The one baby was born dead, and the other was doing fine.  We ended up sending her to T-Goave for further testing and treatment as it seemed she might have still had some deeper issues that we weren't able to treat.  

Yesterday a man came into the clinic with a rag tied around his leg, just under his knee.  Upon first glance it didn't look too serious, but when he took of the rag, there was a huge gash about 4 inches long and an inch or more deep.  Rhoda and I worked for probably 1 1/2 - 2 hours picking out tiny rocks and dirt.  Finally we decided it was clean enough to stitch back shut.  

Happy Faces

 As I was greeted by this girl's bright smile this morning, I resolved to share some happy faces with you all too!  

She is the one that had a really bad infection in her foot, who we sent down to T-Goave for further treatment.  If you've been following the blog, you would have seen her again a few weeks ago when she came back for bandaging.  Her foot is continuing to heal well, minus one toe which was amputated due to the infection.  As shown in this picture, she is now walking on her foot again.  

Her bright smile is special to see as she sits among the people waiting to be seen.  

This was taken this morning after she was re-bandaged and ready to head home.  

This is another familiar face, Arlene (or maybe better known as "foot lady").  She still comes in a few days a week for bandaging.  We are just waiting for the last little open spot to close up.  After her coming for over a year, I'm sure we'll miss her once she doesn't come see us every couple of days!

Then there was the little smiley boy and his mom.  He just needed a quick check in his ears while his mother is a returning hypertension patient.  We are monitoring the hypertension closely as she is also pregnant.  She comes from quite a distance, but still manages a bright smile!

Here is the man Rhoda blogged about last week--her first stitch job.  His wounds are healing nicely.  Today he seemed quite proud of the little booklet he got too--Torch of Truth put out by CAM.  

As I was busily seeing patients this morning, these happy faces blessed me.  Many times at clinic we see the sick people, smelly wounds, and bloody cuts, but there is a brighter side too!