Back in the USA

Well, this morning I am waking up to life in the USA. I tried to stay up late last night to fight jet lag and get back into the swing of hours in the USA, but I was sound asleep by 8PM, despite sleeping very well on both flights.

My departure from Kenya was surreal. I kept thinking that it was a bad dream, and I would wake up still there. My ride came an hour late (no big surprise), and then we drive through rush hour to make it to the airport. Despite the 2.5 hours drive, we got there very early. I had time to hang out in the airport, get dinner, and chat with some other missionaries while we waited for the flight. After boarding the plane and realizing that God had graced me with an empty seat next door, I fell asleep directly (the flight left at midnight Kenyan time). I woke up as we were landing in London.
I had a 2 hour layover in London, so I got a cup of coffee and a breakfast tart, and sat and talked to some other missionaries while waiting for my flight. After boarding that plane, I found that God's grace extends beyond my expectations, as there were TWO empty seats next to me, which meant I had a whole row all to myself. So I stretched out and fell asleep, missing lunch, immigration forms, etc. I woke up about an hour before landing. It was great. Customs was uneventful and my luggage was all there, not a thread missing. My ride was there waiting for me, and then I came up here to the AIM headquarters in Pearl River, NY. I am here today for debriefing, and then I leave at 5PM for West Palm Beach.
Over the next few days I will start uploading pictures from my trip. If you have facebook, I have pictures there, as well. And I will continue to write here, as I think of lessons learned or memories I think you might want to know.
If you can, pray for the weather today. There are storms all over this area (they call the Tri-State area...), which may mean my flight is delayed. Bummer, dude. All I want is to go home, which may be delayed. Pray that those storms pass early, so that there is sufficient time to get back on schedule before my takeoff time, which is 5:10PM.
Thanks again for checking in on me. And thanks for your faithful prayers while I was gone (and now as I am back). One lesson I learned was the power of prayer both to be my strength and my comfort when the answer is yes, and especially when the answer is no.
Talk to you soon!
Jill

Leaving Kenya

Well, right now I am home, packing up my last minute things and getting ready to leave. My ride comes at 4PM, and then after a short trip to drop off my borrowed belongings, we will be off to the airport. I don't know what kind of contact I will have in the airport, so you may not hear from me. But I am out there nevertheless.

This has been a most wonderful trip. There were several who asked today if I would stay for another month, something I gave serious consideration to. But, there are requirements of me in Atlanta, like applying for residency and finishing up medical school. I have a heavy heart as I prepare to leave, and a belly full of traditional African food, thanks to my OR team who spoiled me with lunch and breakfast this morning. I will miss the simplicity of life here, the patients, my awesome operative staff, the teaching and learning from all avenues. Of course I will miss operating. I won't operate like this again until I am well into residency. Unless I come back here... which will most certainly happen.

There is so much to say, and then again, so little. I have fallen in love with this place, and I plan to come back soon. I love the Kenyan way of life, though at times it has frustrated me.

Well, I do suppose that is all for now. Please pray for me as I leave, as I travel, and as I arrive back to the USA. I will land in Newark airport tomorrow at noon, as long as all goes according to plan (no delays, etc). After that, I am in NY for a day debriefing, and then home to West Palm on Thursday night. So look for pictures after that, but probably not before that.

Thanks again for checking in on me. This has been a great way to talk with you, and I'm glad we were able to keep in touch this way. I hope you were able to journey alongside me to some extent.

Talk to you again soon!
Jill

last Sunday

Well, today has been a great day, although I am aware that it is my last Sunday here in Kijabe. I got up and went to church with my roommate, Laura. We had a nice time, though she was paged out of church to take care of someone in the ICU. After church we had a lazy afternoon, punctuated by an American lunch of hamburgers and macaroni and cheese. Then we played some Rack-O, and I think this copy came out before either of our parents were born! Right now she is over our neighbors house negotiating to borrow Scrabble, so that we can have a fun linguistic evening.

I packed up most of my stuff this afternoon, with Laura's help. I came here with two suitcases packed full and weighing the exact limit. I am going home with only one suitcase, and I doubt if it comes close to the weight limit. I am leaving a lot of things here, not the least of which are my personal belongings. I am leaving a lot of love here as well (cheesy as it sounds), as well as some great opportunities. I wish I could stay longer, but I have things to take care of on the other side of the ocean. I know I will come back, though, which is my hope as I prepare to leave.

Tomorrow I have a full day in the OR, which is why I wanted to pack up tonight so that I could enjoy the day tomorrow and Tuesday. My ride for the airport leaves at 4PM on Tuesday, which means I get one last day in the OR. That will be nice.

I guess that is all for now. I will try to write a few more times before I leave here, because then I will likely be silent for a little while as I make my way back to our side of the world. Then I will be back in business.

Thanks for checking in! Talk to you soon!
Jill

Shopping

Today I went shopping in Nairobi for some last minute things as I prepare to leave here. It was fun, but I am so tired! We went to an open-aired market where people were selling their goods. The goal was to bargain for the prices that you wanted, a venture that I was weary of shortly after we began. The thing is, I am just not good at negotiating, and these people were asking VERY high prices for their wares. It was an exercise in frustration for me. Luckily my roommate Laura came along, which was AWESOME! She is great at negotiating and really helped me get some nice things for more reasonable prices. We had a very nice time all together.

Things are winding down here for me. I am going to go to church tomorrow, and then I think I will start gathering my things and packing. I work a full day Monday and Tuesday and leave Kijabe on Tuesday at 4PM to get to the airport in time to catch my midnight flight back to the USA.

This has been a most amazing journey for me, and I know there are still lessons to be learned as I finish this leg of the race. That is all for now, talk to you again soon!
Jill

Operating...

Sorry I haven't written in a few days. Things are going exceedingly well for me here, and I am getting very sad about having to come home. The safari was a real launching point for me, as I made some great friends and had a wonderful time. Since I got back, I have a new roommate, which is working out very well. It is so nice to have someone to talk with at the end of the day, and someone to share my joys and fears with. I have also been much more social with the other people at the hospital, with my social calendar filling up rapidly. The other night we had guests over for dinner, and then last night a bunch of us went out for dinner at the local restaurant. Tonight I was invited over for dinner at my neighbor's house. And this weekend my roommate and I are going to ride into Nairobi for the day on Saturday to do some shopping and see what Nairobi has to offer. It will be nice to go there and check things out, and it will be very nice to have a friend to come along with me. Life is so much better when it is not lived alone.

I have been operating more and more in the theatre. Yesterday I did a circumcision all by myself, which was cool. Today I did half of a VP shunt, which drains excess fluid from the head to the belly. That was neat as well. Tomorrow we are doing a pediatric hernia repair, so I have to read up on that so I can be prepared.

I guess that is all for now. I am having a wonderful time, and while I do miss you all, I am going to have a VERY hard time saying goodbye to this place. I know it will be a "see you soon" rather than a true good-bye, but it will still be very hard. I can't imagine not waking up here everyday and going to the hospital to operate and really help people who can't get the help otherwise.

Talk to you again soon-
Jill

Safari weekend

Well, I had a most wonderful weekend on the safari in Masai Mara. The weather could not have been more beautiful, with cool evenings that made you want to cuddle under a blanket and warm days that left your cheeks sun-kissed and your heart in a flutter. The animals were majestic; there is no other word to describe them. I saw lions, including lion cubs, three of them, just sitting by the road. The momma lions had evidently just feasted on some of the migrating wildebeests, as they were basking in the sun without a care in the world. Guess that's an advantage of being on the top of the food chain... I saw a lone cheetah, just stunning, sitting with its face in the sunlight. I saw many families of elephants, with babies and adolescents. I saw warthogs and hyenas, as well as prairie dogs. I saw impala and gazelle, zebra, ostrich, buffalo, hippos, a crocodile. I saw antelope and more wildebeests than I thought possible migrating across the savanna. I saw the most gorgeous sunset and let my face take in the beauty of it all. I saw baboons. I think that may be all, but I am probably forgetting something. In all, I took about 250 pictures, and then we combined everyone's pictures together, so that I have over 1100 pictures of the weekend. So I will be able to choose the very best ones to upload onto my blog once I get home. The pictures are wonderful but already fail to do justice to the majesty that I saw. You see the pictures and you think - wow, that's nice. Sure looks like they had a good time. Because you can't imagine it unless you have been there yourself. The pictures look a dime a dozen, unless they are your pictures because you saw those animals live and in person. Nevertheless, I will upload some pictures when I get home.

I can't say enough about how wonderful our trip was this weekend. I really got to know the people on the trip with me, and I will remember them for a lifetime for the great time we all had, laughing and joking and experiencing God's glorious creation together. While we were on this safari, so many songs came to mind... That one from NewsBoys, about all God's children singing glory glory, hallelujah He reigns. And the part about the worship rising from the African plain. Yeah, I was there, watching the worship rise to the King. And when I saw the lions, I thought of the song- Hail Hail Lion of Judah, how wonderful you are! How powerful you are! Then I thought of the passion song - salvation spring up from the ground. Lord, rend the heavens and come down. Seek the lost and heal the lame. Jesus being glory to your name! Then I thought of some scripture as well, thinking of the majesty of God, and how creation is an expression of how glorious our God really is. I thought of Psalm 145:

Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.
One generation will commend your works to one another;
they will tell of your mighty acts.
They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and I will meditate on your wonderful works.
They will tell of the power of your awesome works,
and I will proclaim your great deeds.
They will celebrate your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your righteousness.
The Lord is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and rich in love.
The Lord is good to all;
he has compassion on all he has made.
All you have made will praise you, O Lord;
your saints will extol you.

Anyway, it is too long to put all right here, but you should check it out if you get a chance. I was thinking about it while we were on safari. Or better said, the Shane and Shane song called Psalm 145 was stuck in my head. I don't really know that whole thing. Don't think more of me than you ought...

Anyway, I was overwhelmed by the amazing sights of the weekend, and walked away wanting to go back, just to feel the safari sun on my face and the smell the scents of those animals.

Today back at the hospital was great as well. I am taking more responsibility for our service, and getting more opportunities in the OR. Today I got to open an abdomen and close it, too. And I got to do an external ventricular drain, which is neurosurgery. And I got to do a circumcision. It was awesome. Well, not the circumcision, but the whole experience. They are teaching me a lifetime of knowledge and skill, a foundation for a lifetime. It is amazing.

Today I realized that I leave a week from tomorrow. A fact that made me VERY sad. I can't believe my trip is almost over. On some level I feel like it has barely begun, though on other levels I feel like I have been here for a LONG time. Strange how we want what is on the other side and then realize as this side is ending how much it is going to be difficult to leave the side that you tried not to love the whole time. I really have fallen in love with this place, despite the downsides. I have fallen in love with the Kenyan people, the Swahili language, the whole thing. I can't imagine not being able to talk to my friends in my very broken Swahili and then have us all laugh at my terrible rendition of their beautiful language. And I can't imagine not being able to see everyone's smile every morning. It has been a life changing adventure, one that I know will continue throughout my life. This has been a tremendous adventure - the best word to call it. I came out here alone, knowing one person in this whole place, and only having met him once and exchanged a few e-mails in preparation. I came out here in response to a call, and that call has been confirmed and encouraged a thousand-fold.

Sorry for being so nostalgic. You may have quit reading by now... That's OK. I just want to remember this when I get home. And I want you to know how profoundly this place has impacted me.

I will go now. I am getting tired, and I need to get some rest. Plus I want to do some reading before bed. Thanks for checking in on me. Talk to you again soon!
Jill

Rounds today

Rounds this afternoon were very sad. We have a group of Somali refugees here who were brought by a NGO to be treated for their various congenital abnormalities. One had an imperforate anus, which requires two, sometimes three operations to completely repair. One had already undergone the first of three operations for his imperforate anus, and subsequently developed a fistula from his urethra to his rectum. (which we fixed). The third is probably the saddest. The child was born with ambiguous genitalia and was mocked horribly in the refugee camp where they live. Kids pulled down his pants, etc. to make fun of him. The child was given a female name and presumed to be a female. But in reality, he has testes, and after genetic testing, he was found to be a boy. So we operated to create a penis out of his ambiguity. It is now time for him to go home. But the mother is worried about 1) how they are going to get back into the refugee camp, since the child now has a new name (male now), and 2) how they are going to deal with the mocking, since his, too, is a three stage operation, only one stage of which is complete.

This was heartbreaking for me. We had a translator there who was able to go from Somali to English, which was a God-send. Listening to these people talk about their lives in the refugee camp made me want to cry and be angry all at the same time. I wanted to never send them back there, to let them stay at Kijabe until all of their surgeries were complete. But I know that is impossible. Their fate is to return to the refugee camp. Their fear is being forgotten. Each one of them expressed a profound fear of going back to the camp and then never hearing from us again. It was heart wrenching to hear them beg us not to forget them. They were not afraid of going back to the camp. They were afraid we would forget about them.

Anyway, it is time for me to take a nap. While call last night was a breeze, I do want to take advantage of this afternoon and take myself a nice nap. I am headed to dinner tonight at Gary and Leanne Finke's house, who are two young missionary doctors here for 2 years after just finishing residency. I am interested in talking to them about their experience so far, what they think, and if they are formulating long term plans.

Tomorrow I leave for Masai Mara. I went to the bank today and got enough money to pay for my trip. Now all that is left is packing. But at least all of my clothes are clean. Which is nice, because I have the whole of my limited wardrobe to choose from.

OK, that is all for now. I thought I would share with you some of the heartache associated with being here. I think sometimes it is easy to forget the plight of the patient when they are prepped and draped in sterile fashion, unconscious and waiting to be cut open. But when you round, you remember that they are individuals, dearly loved by God and their families, and desperately wanting the best for their lives and their children's lives. Not so different from us after all.

Talk to you again later-
Jill

Midday for me!

Well, I realize that as I write this, most of you are sleeping, or else should be sleeping. While it is 4AM EST, it is midday for me, around 11AM. I was on call last night, for the last time for my trip here. Sad, I know. What will I complain about from now on???

Call last night was the easiest yet. The last call into the hospital last night was at 10:30PM, and then I didn't get another page until 5AM. The call at 5 was frustrating, and I know I made some nurses mad at me. This man was actively dying, and his family wanted all possible measures to be taken to save his life. Thing is, we do have things we can do to prolong someone's life, even here in Kijabe. I asked the wife several times if she really meant it, that she wanted us to aggressively resuscitate her husband, and she said yes. In my world, yes means yes, and when I patient (or the family) asks for something, you do it. But the nurses didn't agree with me, and kept disappearing rather than help me get IV access, maintain oxygen, etc. I was all alone in the room most of the time, and I had to go hunt down the nurse to help me when I needed something. I finally called the intern to help me out, and then I found the charge nurse and told her that I needed help, and that the nurses were not helping me like they ought to... And then the nurses magically appeared and started helping out, all the while talking about the "mazunga" which is a slang word for a white person. I know they were talking ill of me for tattling on them, but I really needed some help, and that was their jobs to help out. I know they have other work to do, but so did I. Anyway, who knows if the guy lived or not, I left when the intern told me I could leave. Because that is how things are supposed to work. I can't imagine the same scenario in the USA. If a nurse walked away in the middle of a code, I think she would be fired. But I guess I deceive myself if I think this is like the USA.

Rounds today were fairly uneventful, and there are no operations scheduled because all the peds surgeons are out of the station today. So technically that means I am still on call, because if anything happens in peds, I am the one who has to respond. Let's hope nothing happens, at least not for an hour or so. I need to get a shower and change my clothes.

Tomorrow I leave for Masai Mara. I am very excited to be able to get away from the station, to see the animals, and to take in the Africa that we all think of in our minds. I will take as many pictures as I can, and then when I get back to the USA, I will upload them so you can see what I saw.

That is all for now. I am going to work on getting myself clean and then getting my house clean. And then maybe I will go up to the super-duka. But we'll see about that. I may conk out before that.

Hope all is well with each of you. I do miss you all, and at times I really miss the USA. But I try not to dwell on that, because I will have the USA back sooner than I want, and I will miss the simplicity of this place when I am gone.

Thanks for checking in on me. Talk to you again soon!
Jill

Great day in the OR

Well, today was a GREAT day in the OR. All the other peds surgeons were gone, except for one, so I had to scrub into all the operations today, first assisted on all of them, and got to operate WAY more than I have before. It was awesome. I learned so much from actually being able to operate, like handling instruments and how to move your hands so as to minimize excess movements. It was great.

I am home now and will relax and get ready for tomorrow. Since all the other peds surgeons are away, I am being given more responsibility regarding taking care of the patients on the floor. There are probably 40 surgical patients, and I am supposed to know the updates and stories on all of them. So I need to do some studying tonight, so that I know the patients better tomorrow. This morning I was embarrassed because I didn't know the details on all the patients. So tonight I will study them well so that tomorrow I will be better prepared for the questions in rounds. I feel like today was my first day as an intern, being responsible for patient care. A little overwhelming, but I feel up for the challenge. And it makes it worth it because I get to spend the day in the OR operating in exchange for taking care of the ward issues.

OK, well, I guess that is all for now. Sorry for the short post, but I have to eat some dinner, do some laundry, and then prep for tomorrow. Oh, and shower, too. Lots of things on the list, and only a few hours to get them done.

Talk to you again soon!
Jill

Call: Survived

Well, I survived my last weekend call relatively unscathed. Although I did have two full-fledged break downs, the first since being here. The exhaustion combined with the emotional turmoil of what I was seeing was just too much for me to bear, and I had two crying sessions. The first was on Sunday afternoon, after we received a 15 year old patient on Saturday who was in full anaphylactic reaction to penicillin, who had been transferred from an outside hospital. Can you imagine transferring a patient in full anaphylaxis??? As we were trying to intubate him, his heart stopped beating, and I was the one to start chest compressions on him. We worked for about 3 minutes on his lifeless body until his heart finally kicked in again (under high doses of adrenaline) and he got a pulse back. The kid is currently in the ICU on an adrenaline drip, in a coma. Very very sad, and I just couldn't handle it. That on top of 2 hours of sleep on Saturday night... and the knowledge that I was still on call for another 15 hours... it was too much for me to handle. So I cried and cried until I fell asleep. And then the pager went off after about 45 minutes.

The second breakdown was this morning, after 4 hours of sleep last night (making 6 hours for the entire weekend...) and a man who was having chest pains and a presumed MI, and no one would respond to pages. I did everything that I knew how to treat this man's heart attack, and then I paged the intern, who took an hour to respond to the page, and then I paged the attending, who never responded to the page. I was so frustrated (and exhausted), that I went to Labor and Delivery to find Ken, the other intern on this weekend, and I think one of the best doctors in the hospital despite being an intern, took one look at him, and busted into tears. I told him that I needed his help because no one else would help me. He immediately left L&D and came to help me. When the other intern moseyed on into the ER an hour later, she said, "Oh, Ken, what are you doing here?" to which he (graciously) replied, "Oh, Jill needed some help so I thought I would help out." Couldn't resist, so I said, "Didn't you get all of my pages? What happened?" to which she replied, "Oh, my phone wasn't working..." (So it took you an HOUR to walk to the hospital from your house that is 100 yards away???) Anyway, I left shortly after that, because I was ready to sack the female intern, who shall remain nameless, just in case you run into her in this life or the next...

Anyway, from there I went straight to rounds on the pediatric neuro surgery cases. After rounds I went and found Dan, my peds surgery attending. He took one look at me and said, "Jill, why don't you go home and get some sleep. You look like you could use a few hours of sleep." I must have looked like death turned over. So I came right home, took a shower, ate breakfast, and then went to bed. I woke up 4 hours later feeling like a new person. I no longer hated the hospital, no longer hated the intern (although I did take an opportunity to tattle on her to one of the attendings, because I think her behavior was appalling). I ate lunch, got dressed, and went back to the hospital. It was good because I was able to help out some with clinic and with the pre-op patients for tomorrow.

So now I am home again, and resting comfortably. In the USA there are call rules about how long you can be on call and then how long you have to be out of the hospital before coming back to work. It is 30 hours on, 12 hours off. Mandatory. Here, if it weren't for the kindness of Dan, I would have been 56 hours on, 6 hours of sleep. I am so glad I am training in the USA under the blanket of the 80 hours work week. I am going to blow through 80 hours this week. Even with this morning off.

Anyway, I am happy to be alive again, and SO HAPPY to be rid of that pager. Here we don't have our own pagers; they are shared between the people on call. So there is a ritual turning over of the pager every morning to the next person on call. I was ecstatic to turn over that pager this morning. You have no idea...

In other news, because the world keeps turning even when you are trapped in the vortex of call, I got my itinerary for my safari. I am leaving Friday at 1PM and will return in the afternoon on Sunday. I am super excited about it. There are six of us going for sure, and another might join us. It will be fun to go with other people, even if I don't know them super well, I will get to know them through the course of the weekend. We will go on several different safaris, some in the morning to see the lions, and some in the evenings, to watch the sunset over the savannah. It is going to be awesome. I will take as many pictures as my cameras will allow, and then I will share them with you when I get back to the USA.

Tonight I ask for your prayers for this hospital. My call weekend revealed some of the cracks in this system, and I do know that every system has its cracks. Please pray that Kijabe will have the wisdom to hire the right people and the humility to change things when cracks are found. Pray that the leadership of the hospital will guide it in a direction of constant improvement. Pray that the workers would not lose heart, and would not grow weary in doing good. I know that it is hard when you watch patients die all the time, and it gets easy to not give your 100% effort, if you know that the patient is probably going to die anyway. But pray against that. It only spurs mediocrity.

And, selfishly, I ask for your prayers for me as well. Pray that I get a good night's sleep tonight, and that I wake up ready to go in the morning. For tomorrow and Wednesday, there are no other interns on our service, which means I am squarely responsible for the pre-op and post-op care of our patients, as well as scrubbing in as first assistant. These are tasks that I am PUMPED to be doing, since they are usually reserved for residents and interns, both here and in the USA. And I have been given the opportunity to work in both roles while here, both an honor and a privilege. Pray that I would remember all the details, and that I would have the energy I need to match the excitement I have in my heart. Pray that I would fulfill all of my duties.

Thanks for checking in with me. I am doing well at the end of the day. I know sometimes I sound like I am complaining, which I struggle with. I struggle with sharing the honest experience of my days with you, and balancing that with the big picture of what I am doing. I struggle with sharing a balanced picture with you, and I struggle to keep that balance in my own mind. You know, seeing the forest for the trees is often difficult, especially when the trees are big and tall and the branches are twisted. I struggle daily to keep that "forest" viewpoint in spite of some of the struggles that I see around me. I hope you can see that, too.

I'll talk to you again soon, tomorrow likely. For now, I am going to eat dinner, and then maybe try to watch a movie. You know I only brought two movies, National Treasure 1 and National Treasure 2. So I will have to decide which treasure to seek tonight... we'll see...

Adios for now!
Jill

On call

Well, it is Saturday and I am on call. I had a rather uneventful rest of the week, working on peds surgery, helping out where I can. I am learning a lot on this service. Peds is so different than adult medicine. It is a whole different mindset, from the operations we do to the post-op evaluation to all the other details. I have some great operative pictures that I will share when I get home. That is the most interesting thing about peds surgery. Everyone carries a camera, and EVERYONE gets their picture taken. I hate to say it, but our theatre is a like a revolving freak show, where we get to fix all the congenital anomalies. So while they may come into the OR as a social outcast, they leave looking more mainstream, though with scars to prove it was not natural.

We did a cordee release yesterday on a child who was born with ambiguous genitalia. He is a boy, though his genitals weren't as obviously male as his genetics evaluation. The story goes that the kids in the neighborhood used to pull his pants down to make fun of his genitals, since they were ambiguous. I guess cruelty transcends culture. So we fixed him, sort of. We did the best we could to fashion a penis out of what was there, and let's hope it grows and he is treated more normally. We also did a stone removal surgery for a child who had many real stones bilaterally as well as some bladder stones. Finally, we did a case where I child was urinating out of three orifices, his penis, his anus, and his colostomy. So we went in a closed the fistula that was causing the urine to go out of the two pooping holes, so now he is only peeing through the pee hole.

Today on call I was called to see a child who had an anaphylactic reaction to penicillin, I think. He was in respiratory distress and required intubation. He is very sick, and I don't know if he is going to live. 15 years old. Very sad. My heart is heavy right now, because this morning the kid was normal, and now he is in the ICU clinging to life. I saw his mother as I was leaving the hospital, and she just looked stunned. It isn't like people here don't love their kids as much as we love our kids. It is just that they don't have places like Eggleston Children's Hospital to take their kids. Instead they bring them to a local health center, who promptly transfers them to a hospital several hours away. This kid had the PCN shot at 10:00AM, and I saw him for the first time at 1:00PM. That is 3 hours the kid was already suffering. In Atlanta he would have been life-flighted to Eggleston, or else treated with epinephrine and Benadryl (which we DON'T HAVE!) at his local hospital. Anyway, needless to say I am angry and sad, because I don't know if this kid is going to live.

OK, well, I am home again, and I think I am going to take a shower to try to relax away that code. Yeah, the kid did code, and I was the one doing chest compressions. I really hope he doesn't die.

Please pray for Rodgers, that is his name. Pray that his lungs clear and his heart keeps beating. And pray that his brain was preserved, in spite of the period of reduced oxygen. Pray for his mother as well, that she can find comfort in the Lord. And pray for me, also, that this call night would be calm, and that nothing dramatic would happen.

Thanks for checking in on me, and sorry I haven't written in a few days. The internet connection has been bad for the past few days, and this is the first time I have been able to log in to the blog. I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable July 4. Turns out they don't celebrate it here; we were in the OR all day... Hope the fireworks were pretty.

Today as I sign off, I am thinking of a U2 song, Pslam 40.
I waited patiently for the Lord
He inquired and heard my cry.
He picked me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay.
I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song.

Today, I am thankful that in the face of death, I can sing a new song, a song of salvation, that death is not the end, thanks to the work of Jesus on the cross. All this suffering is temporary compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. And the hope of heaven. Although I have to admit the suffering gets hard to watch sometimes. And the helplessness of not being able to stop it. But I will sing my new song of the grace and mercy of my God.

Talk to you soon!
Jill

Full day...

Well, I was on call last night, which is why there was no post. I was called in throughout the evening, and when I finally crawled in bed at midnight, I prayed to God. I told Him that He knew what I could and couldn't handle, and I knew the ultimately He would give me the grace I needed to get through the night, but if He could PLEASE not make that pager go off again, I would be grateful. And then the pager didn't go off until 4:50AM. That means I got almost 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night, in spite of being on call. I am, however, VERY tired, and will be heading to bed early tonight to get a full night's sleep.

Today in the OR we had many pediatric cases. We did more shunts, more spina bifida closures, a lip tumor removal, and a fingernail removal. Oh, and I scrubbed in on a skin grafting for a little boy who was badly burned.

For those who knew Simon (the gangrene case I told you about), he went to be with the Lord this morning. I wasn't there, but the ICU doctor said it all happened very quickly. He was talking with his family, and then and hour and a half later he was dead. I talked to him last on Monday, and he told me that the Lord had been very good to him. I agree. Simon has 10 children, and now he is forever in the presence of God Almighty.

After rounds I picked up a pediatric surgery textbook from one of the attendings, so that I could read about the cases we are working on. We did afternoon rounds, and we saw one of the babies that we are going to be operating on tomorrow. This baby is 16 days old and has a cantaloupe-sized mass growing out the back of his head. Actually, the mass contains most of his brain matter, we suspect mostly cerebrum. We are going to remove it tomorrow. The mass is much larger than his head, though his head is on the small side of normal. Otherwise the kid looks pretty normal. I will try to remember my camera tomorrow,because this thing is indescribable.

Anyway, I guess that is all for now. I have to think of something to eat for dinner, and then I will take a hot shower and put on my pajamas. I think I will be in bed by 8PM. That should give me many hours of peaceful sleep before the alarm sounds at 6:15 tomorrow morning.

Please continue praying for me. I am on call again this coming weekend, which plain stinks. So pray that the call won't be bad, and that I will be able to get rest in the midst of the pager. Also pray that I continue to get better from this cold. I do feel like I am on the upswing, but pray that I continue to improve. Also, pray for Simon's family, as they face life without him. And pray for the other patients at the hospital, that those who don't yet know the Lord would see His glory, and that all would receive the healing they desire. I don't remember if I told you or not, but there are a lot of Somali people here at the hospital who have come into Kenya seeking refuge from the ongoing war there. So we have quite a few Somali individuals who speak a different language and practice a different religion. Pray for them, that the love of God would transcend language barriers.

OK, I guess that is all for now. Thanks again for checking in on me. I am still having a lot of trouble uploading images, but when I get back to the USA, I will be able to use the high speed internet to upload lots of images. For now, you can just imagine what things look like here...

Talk to you again soon!
Jill