2 nursing students, 3 med students, and 1 nurse practitioner...

Tuesday we were late to both lunch and dinner. This never happens. But this Tuesday was a different story. Not only was it Mamba day, but two med students and a nurse practitioner are in for the week from the states, which meant that we set up the clinic outside under a tent. So the day began…. We saw over 40 Mamba patients, with many of them gaining a whole kilo in one week. It was really encouraging to see such an improvement in just a few weeks. Jessica and I interviewed the moms and their kids, while Chelsea did some serious crowd control and snapped the weekly photo of the kids.
We saw all the kids, gave out over 80 kilos of Mamba, and then began to help in the clinic. As soon as we walked into the clinic (a cement building with steel bars over the screened windows and no electricity), we found the med students taking care of a five-year-old little girl who was TEXTBOOK for congestive heart failure. For any Ida V. Nursing School people reading this- she literally looked like the cartoon character that we learned last semester in adult 1. She sat in tripod position, she had ascites in her abdomen, her chest was contracting, her legs were very edematous, her arms were stick thin, and her heart was beating so fast it was difficult to get a pulse. Then we looked over and Elsie was putting in a catheter for a urine sample in a different little girl whose entire body was unexplainably puffy. I THEN looked over to see Chelsea interviewing a man, who looked to be about 75 years old, but claimed to be 50 as he explained how he fell out of a tree last week and broke 2-4 ribs. Goodness…

Plan of action? No idea. Then the nurse practitioner, Stephanie, walked by and said, “Calculate that drip rate!” Drip rate? What drip rate!?! We looked behind the curtain that she had come from and found a very malnourished and dehydrated 6-month-old little boy who Stephanie had just started an IV on. So we began calculating the rate for the IV fluids to drip into this tiny little boy on the wrapper of sterile gauze sponge. Jess was able to figure out the drip rate as we also gave an antibiotic through his little IV… We continued to monitor the boy and his fever started to decrease, it was so exciting to see this little one FINALLY break his fever (he has been in the Mamba program for the last 2 weeks and has had a high fever on both visits). Praise Him!

I’m now sitting at a table, waiting for dinner, with one of the med students and Stephanie, the nurse practitioner. We’re talking about the power of prayer versus the use of medicine. Quite the topic for pre-dinner conversation. I’m just listening, trying to soak it all in…. everyone around has so much experience- I wish I knew a fraction of what they knew or had see a little of what they’ve seen. But, one thing I do know is that I (more often than not) rely solely on the little knowledge that I have when we are down at the clinic with patients. I immediately turn to the bit of knowledge I’ve gained through nursing school, or I ask Elsie a question (RN at the clinic who lives here at Canaan), or I look to the med students/Stephanie for the answer. And while I know that this is so valid and I know that I am supposed to use that knowledge that the Lord’s allowed me to learn, I never think to pray for the patient when I’m down in the clinic with them. It’s often not until I blog about our day or I write in my journal that I think to pray for the people Jess and I saw. Gosh, I wish prayer was the first thing I thought to do. I’m not sure why it’s not. I haven’t thought about this long enough to write it in an eloquent way. I’m not sure what to write now. I want Christ to constantly be on my mind as I interact with patients alongside the med students. Please pray that the Lord would increase my faith. Thank you for all your encouragement and prayers. We feel them, big time.
Welp, that’s all I’ve got for now… off to dinner to eat some pumpkin soup…

Missin you guys.

-Morg