Happy Little Things

    "Good-morning, Weelie! What's up?"

     I had to keep touching him to be sure that he was real. This little bouncy boy was a preemie baby, at death's door just ten months ago...and now he is happy and fat. Today he came in with a Candidiasis infection and we treated him for that. I am already looking forward to his rendezvous when I get a good excuse to hold him again. His mom, who is mentally slow, just sits there and smiles as we rave over the miracle of Weelie's life.
    And you should meet our other day brightener patient- a thin, little, old man. He has an abscess on his neck, and doesn't want to go out to town, away from his little grand-children, to get help. We told him we can give him a Ceftriaxone shot every day, if he would like to try that method of treatment instead. This week, he is living with a friend, so he can come every day, because it takes him all day to walk to his house and back if he goes the whole way home.

    I pity him. He said when he got sick, his wife left him and he got little. We like to give him a small can of milk every day, and he just loves it.
     Cheers for Whitney! She performed her first stitch job today. I must say she did a very competent job. I am excited about all her progress in the last couple weeks!
   

   
        Have a great evening, everyone! God bless- Mis Woda

The Sad Suffering...

  ...of the very old and the very young always seems most unfair. Like this little guy who had one of the saddest faces I've ever seen. His eyes, his skin, and his tiny limbs all spoke of terrible disease...or was it terrible neglect? Or both? His eyes were so strangely stretched open he couldn't close them all the way. He managed to squeak out a few weak cries as I bathed him and rubbed cream into his chapped body.We sent him to town for tests and continued care.

 This poor old man came in this morning...just a few months too late. He had hurt his finger in his garden and totally neglected it till now.  It was swollen huge and full of rotten holes running with pus. Ro stuck a lollie pop into his mouth to try to distract him from the terrible pain as my applicator went straight through the side of his finger and out the other side.

 

 

 

...And here's a sweet new baby that came FAST last night for Mis Ro and Kindra. :)

 

Have a blessed day everyone! -Mis Kate

 

 

 

 

 

 

Careful with hammers, folks!!

Jean Franz' foot, today. For you folks that have expressed interest in helping with his skin grafting, we did have contact with a potential hospital today. They are looking into possibilities and we should know soon what the options are! So keep praying about that.

Vision problems

This man fell down while working in the garden. A stalk of pitimi, or millet, entered under his eye and pushed at an angle right up into his eyeball itself, we believe! Ouch!!!
We couldn't do much other than clean and bandage the surface cuts, and give him a ride to town for a doctor visit. It didn't look good for the poor man's eye. But pray more that God would use this to bring him to Christ, he's not a believer.
>

If You're Happy and You Know It, Stomp Your Feet

     What a good day. As the sun disappears behind the hills, I know that it was good. For a lot of reasons. But wait until you see this picture.

 

  "In the Name of Jesus," Jean Franz chanted as he waved his leg and did his physical therapy exercises. It was so good to see him bouncing around and in good spirits. No tears today! His leg is continually making new skin, and he seems to be fighting infection quite bravely, although we know that the possibility of infection beginning is just around the corner at any time. "In the Name of Jesus", healing can happen, though. That part is thrilling. Later  today we pulled out some crutches to help him stomp his happy foot a bit more, and get some outside fresh air more often.

     I think I also need to tell you about yesterday. Because, well, because I am celebrating Kate's first delivery of a newborn! Unluckily, we lost a lot of sleep over it, but since it was an adorable, healthy baby girl in the end, we kind of forgave them all for that. Kate named the little thing Lovena before they left this morning.

 
   A man on crutches appeared in our clinic today. He had an open fracture from an accident he was involved in during the month of August. If he never gets help, he will be on crutches for the rest of his life. I hope we can find someone with a heart and the skill to rebreak it for him, and help him get back on his feet.

 
  Today we had a lot of visitors at clinic. About 7 Americans came to tour our facility in hopes of starting a new clinic in another area of the Haitian hills. I think it is exciting! So there, that's part of my good day. Have a good evening yourself! -Mis Woda
   

All the Little People...

 ...have brought so many smiles to our faces the last few days! Some tiny and sick, others fat and healthy, others screaming for a Mama that died. Here are a few of the priceless expressions that passed through our doors.

 This tiny girlie came in our gate with her very out-of-breath Mama. Mama was by herself at her house when she went into a very FAST labor. As soon as she could she walked to the clinic with her very dirty, screaming, preemie baby. She weighed 4 lbs. 10 oz. but was perfectly formed and healthy. They had a dirty string tied loosely around her cord and her little belly tied tight with an old rag. Whit and I felt like we were playing doll as we bathed her and dressed her in a newborn sleeper that was MUCH too big. :) After a bath and some lotion in her lil cheeks she fell asleep looking perfectly content. Her Mama begged me to name her, so I named her exactly what she looked like. Angel. 

 Little Roodnael came in last week severely malnourished with a very high fever. This week he's lost some of his stomach distension and is stronger... just like our hilarious little Camilson who has been making us nurses laugh with his big cheesy grin. YAY for PlumpyNut!



























                          Little Lovena has Downs Syndrome. She is cuteness personified.

 And the TWINS are back! Stina and Shadina are as healthy and chubby as ever. Thank God.

 I want to add a BIG Thank you to everyone who prayed for me during my time of sickness. I'm very happy and thankful to be reunited with my pink stethescope again. :) Praise God for life and breath!
 -Mis Kate

Slow Days

I enjoy Tuesdays.  Monday morning always feels so rushed, as there is usually quite a few patients that are waiting to be seen, and rendezvouses to be taken care of, and everyone is still trying to wake up after the weekend.  Tuesdays are generally slower.  Time can be taken to talk to the blood pressure patients and (attempt) to ask them how they are and let them know whether or not their blood pressure was high today, since they all want to know.  I can ask Fre Adolph what a word means, if I can't figure it out.  Whit and I can spend extra time with Jean Franz, our burn patient, and be extra picky with wrapping his foot if we feel like it.  A little extra time for cleaning can be spared.  There isn't quite as long a line of blood pressure patients.  Life just generally feels more peaceful to me on Tuesday.

I thought about not doing a blog post today, since it seemed like a relatively uneventful day, but then I thought that maybe a short, uneventful post was better than no post, so...

I thought I might add a few pictures from today, mostly because they take up space and make it look like I wrote a much longer post than I actually did. :o) Here Rhoda and Whitney are having class, as Rho is teaching Whitney how to take care of all the blood pressure patients that come in each day.

 

This is Jean Franz, checking out his neighbors, a mother and baby that came in yesterday evening and spent the night in the hospital.  He is always interested in anything that is happening around his current "home", looking, I'm sure, for something to break up the monotony of his days here.

And here Rhoda is, steri-stripping a small laceration on this young man's face, just above his left eye.  He looked so sad, so I tried to cheer him up by offering to take a picture of him, and then showing it to him.  That will usually elicit a grin or a laugh from the glummest of children, but not so with this youngster.  I thought I may have caught a glimmer of a smile when I showed him the photo that I had taken of him, but it vanished all too quickly.  I'm still not sure if it was the pain from his injury, or just shyness, that kept him from smiling.

So, like I said, a rather uneventful day here at the clinic.  Which isn't all bad, at least, not in my book.  Uneventful means nobody losing a scary amount of blood, that nobody has a mother or son that is probably not going to make it much longer, and that we didn't have any patients sick enough to need to be sent out.  So I'm okay with slow days.  In fact, I enjoy them. :o)

Oh, and I'm going to add one final picture below.  Whit and I decided to go for a walk this afternoon to see for ourselves how Fre Direk's mule has been faring.  I grabbed my camera before we left, so, hopefully, I could capture a picture of how well she is doing; and (maybe) share with y'all the same satisfied feeling I had when I saw her. 

Have a blessed week, and thanks for taking the time to read the blog. :o)

-Kindra