Busy busy
Wendy: What a busy time of year even over here, far from the holiday rush of the civilized world. It's been an exhausting but fulfilling and adventure-filled week.
We just finished a week of mobile clinics with health talks and Bible stories in some remote AFM and PFM projects. We had a volunteer Filipino doctor with us from Guam and that was fun and helpful to have her along.
Tuesday we spent waiting on the weather to clear up and never were able to fly, but it was probably for the best as we ended up needing to take care of some patients at the hospital and check out and pick up a stroke patient out in a village at the base of the mountains.
Dr. Talon and Rovelyn (our new Filipina missionary who is here helping us with her American husband, Danny) and I took our discharged patient and family back home to Bingbilang (a village near the trailhead to Kamantian) and dropped off some desperately needed meds that were needed for a patient in the mountains (one of our in-patients went psycho on Malaria meds—more on that later). Then we picked up the son of the stroke patient who was meeting us there so he could show us where they lived.
We weren't prepared for the slippery, muddy hike at dusk (after driving as far as we could into the jungle) but I was thankful for my companions who were good sports and even seemed to enjoy the adventure. We did a quick assessment of the patient and found his right side completely numb and an irregular heart rate, so we quickly got him ready and hiked back down the now dark, slippery, muddy trail back to the truck, with the patient being carried on someone's back. The next exciting part was turning around in the dark with trees, logs, and roots and mucky mud and finding our way back out of there! I was very thankful for a very big truck, jacked up with huge tires, though I missed Dwayne, as he's usually the one driving.
Monday we flew to Amrang to see patients and do follow up on the ones we had seen there the week before. This village has been begging for a clinic and school (and now a church too!) for years and Georges are making plans for this very soon. The people live just far enough and across one too many flooded rivers from the clinic that they can only come to Kamantian rarely and often can't bring the sick person with them so it's a lot of guess work to try to treat them from afar. Many people just never come or get treated at all. The helicopter helps a lot, but they really need a full time presence there. We need more missionaries!
We had a great team with Rovelyn checking people in, Dwayne doing vital signs and preparing meds and Dr. Talon and I seeing patients. Rovelyn did some health talks on worms and the basic germ theory with some flip charts while we were finishing up patients. They are extremely filthy and malnourished due to lack of education more than lack of resources. The doctor did a talk on nutrition and then pleaded with us to please bring them some seeds next time we come (which we plan to do—or at least give them to the missionaries that will be starting the work there so they can help make sure they are understood and are used properly.)
After we packed up I told a couple Bible stories (about Daniel and his three friends refusing the king's food and getting 10 times stronger and about Elijah and the widow with her flour and oil being replenished daily during the famine and her son being raised back to life). It was a fun trip. They seemed eager to listen and learn more.
Next we flew over to Kamantian to show the doctor and Rovelyn the project there. I thought I sensed some shock when we showed them our hut and fed them lunch in our humble abode. The doctor made comments like, "you've really lived HERE for 5 years?! It was a mucky mess up there too and we slopped around showing them the area as best we could. We got there just in time to watch the school kids do their last practice of their big, yearly Christmas program.
While we were up there, Dwayne discovered the rain has been doing more damage to the helicopter than on the trails and we were stuck 'til late afternoon while we waited for a carrier to run all the way down to Bingbilang to pick up a grease gun (that Eric had to bring out there for him from Brooke's) and bring it back in time to fix the heli and fly out before dark. It was probably providential, though 'cause Joha (one of the nurses) was sick and they were swamped as it was, so we helped see patients and get things under control before we left.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of helicopter problems. Dwayne flew Rovelyn and I out first 'cause he planned to bring some rice back into the mountains (for the patients and the store) and then fly the doctor back to Brooke's Point while Rovelyn and I drove back in the truck.
But, after we loaded the rice and Dwayne went to start the Heli, it wouldn't start and smoke started wafting out of the battery area. He jumped out and found the grounding post on the frame completely rusted off! His tools he usually caries with him were in his bag at the landing spot in the mountains to be brought with the next flight with the doctor.
So, we called Eric and he came tearing out to Bingbilang on the motorcycle with some vice grips but by then it was too late, it was already getting dark. So, our poor doctor was stranded in the mountains without us! But, she ended up having a wonderful time with the Georges, who so thoughtfully put her up for the night.
The next morning was an even earlier one as we had to go even farther to a PFM project an hour’s flight north from here. Dwayne had to go get the doctor and refuel up there and then again down in Brooke's while Eric and Danny (Rovelyn's husband) took me up to Takras Academy where they dropped me off for Dwayne to come pick me up later. (It saved Avgas that way to be closer north when he came back to pick me up after dropping the doctor off first).
Eric and Danny continued on to Puerto to pick up Avgas which finally came in, Praise God! Just in time, too. We just run out! (Thank you for your prayers! The guys said there were several miracles including getting money just in time to buy the gas as the workers were already closing up and walking away!)
Anyway, we had a huge crowd of people waiting for us when we arrived but thankfully they had a good team of helpers, including the doctor, who had already started to register people and take vitals. We worked furiously all day to try and see every last patient (which we pretty much did) before we left. We saw over 60 patients.
The doctor saw patients this time while I finished her prescriptions (she would just write for her treatment: "Antibiotic" and "mucolytic" or "malaria meds," and I would choose from what we had and figure the dosages etc.( She wrote her findings and diagnosis also so I was able to determine what meds we had would be good for each patient).
Then Dwayne and I packed the meds and I gave them to the patients. They have a different dialect but they could understand just enough for me to explain their meds. The PFM missionary pastor also helped translate when needed and hand out meds.
The people there seemed much more healthy in general and better clothed. They waited all day (many of them) to be seen, so they must have been pretty desperate. We left some Malaria meds and charcoal for the missionaries, as they had no supplies of their own.
Next time we will go to the farther away project where they are really remote (8 hour hike in) and are much more poor and uneducated and have little to no source of money or medicine. The missionaries are gone from there right now so we are waiting for them to come back.
Well, time is running out and we need to head back to Kamantian. It's a very busy time of year for the clinic. When I left I had been working day and night with 6 in-patients (Typhoid and Malaria) and the day I left, one of the patients went psycho on some Malaria meds (Larium or Mephaquine—don't ever use it! We've seen one too many patient have extreme side effects with it. And yet it's still prescribed regularly around the world! If you've ever gone on a mission trip to a Malarial region you've probably taken it prophylactically. We save it for very very rare and desperate cases). So they've been even more swamped since he needed round the clock observation.
One of the PFM girls that we brought out to the hospital a couple weeks ago also had some scary psychotic episodes, most likely due to her Malaria. It was probably Cerebral Malaria and the hospitals down here are, unfortunately, pretty scary and they didn't do things very efficiently or effectively at all.
They actually stopped her Quinine after a couple days and then later gave her one dose of Chloroquine (to "finish" her course that she had started at couple weeks before at her project when she first got sick)! They did a blood smear and said it was negative (which it will be if you're on Malaria meds or if it's Cerebral Malaria and all the parasites are in the brain) and they let her go.
They were almost home when she started talking funny and scaring the other people in the bus. So, they didn't even go home. They just went straight up to Puerto to the Adventist Hospital. She's doing much better now and we just pray she is completely healed now.
So, never a dull moment around here. Gotta run. Thank you so much for your prayers. We continually praise Him for allowing us to do this very fulfilling work.
Here's a closing note from Dwayne:
It seems a lot of people have a hard time leaving the worlds securities and exercising faith in God's ability to provide. We cannot consider anything we have or do in this world to be secure, the only thing that we can be sure of and rely on is God. We need to start relying on God now. Very soon the earthly support of all that follow God’s commandments will be cut off and the only hope we have will be our faith in God. We need to give everything to God now because everything will be taken away if we don't voluntarily surrender it. Challenge God. Give it all to him and see what he gives in return for surrendering all you are and have to him.
Happy Holidays to all of you. (My parents and Eric's girlfriend who's an SM in Palau are coming in a couple weeks and we are all driving up north to El Nido for a tropical Christmas. We're looking forward to that.)
Love, Wendy and Dwayne
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