Uncohesive blog post

This past month has been a little on the wild side. I usually try to tell one good story here, but I don´t have one to pick this time. I´ve just been running from story to story non-stop since the last time I was online. So, here´s December in brief.

Dec. 6: take Pastor Rich to the Waspam airport. Have to argue with the people at the counter to get him on the flight he had already paid for. He ended up having to buy a new ticket.

Dec. 7: Run a mobile clinic in Miguel Bikan with Janet, the MINSA nurse.

Dec. 9: Almost get to help with a birth. I wait at the mission house for too long, and make it to the clinic 20 minutes late. Janet, Amelia, and Jenny had already taken care of it.

Dec. 10: Take a 15-yr-old pregnant girl to Waspam because she´s too high-risk to give birth in Francia.

Dec. 12-14: Help lead Vacation Bible School for Francia´s children.

Dec. 13: Take a pregnant lady to Waspam for a C-section.

Dec. 15: Help lead a Pathfinder´s meeting in preparation for the coming camperee. Interesting, because I´ve never been a Pathfinder, and now I´m leading it in Spanish . . .

Dec. 16: Run around madly trying to find transportation to Waspam for a woman who´s had a stroke in the village of Wisconsin. Jeremy is gone, and without him to drive, we can´t take her in our truck. I am reduced to begging transportation for my patient from a truck that happens to be coming thru Francia. The driver says no. :( When Jeremy gets back, we have a birthday party for him, and I tell him to plan on driving to Waspam the next day.

Dec. 17: Coordinate getting my patient from Wisconsin to Waspam. Tell Jeremy how to take care of her - I can´t go with him because I have a health class this afternoon. Finish planning for health class. Spend a lot of time and effort and am pleased with my program - but no one shows up. Apparently it is bean planting season, and everyone is too busy to come.

Dec. 18: Clear the church yard in preparation for the Pathfinder´s weekend. This means cutting grass with a machete. It´s fun for the first half-hour. Then I start wishing the rest of the people who promised to come help actually would. They must be planting beans, too.

Dec. 19: Pathfinders arrive. Finish clearing church ground in the morning. The men who promised to help finally arrive and help. They tell me clearing ground with a machete is men´s work. :P Well, if the men aren´t around . . . I spend time in church playing Bible games and singing songs in the afternoon. In the evening I go back to the mission hill to shower, because I´m still gross from cutting grass. I´m ready to go back to town and sleep with Tekoa and the Pathfinders in the Community Center when a man comes to the hill and says they need help taking care of a burn victim in the clinic. The nurse, Janet, is gone. I rush down to the clinic to help the miwife, Amelia, clean her up. She has second degree burns on the back of her right calf, blistered, with blackened skin peeling off. Jeremy, Amelia, and I clean and put on burn cream. I tell Amelia to watch for signs of shock and give her rehydrating salts. Then I finally get to go to bed - with a bunch of hyper Pathfinders.

Dec. 20: Wake up at 5am to the first Pathfinder worship of the morning. Tekoa and I hadn´t realized this service was on the schedule. :( Jeremy and I go clean and dress our burn patient´s leg again. We have to cut off more dead skin that´s peeling up. It takes a long time, and we don´t get breakfast until 9am. After that, we head out to Santa Clara, where Jeremy, Jenny, and I are responsible for the church service. Getting on the road is challenging - we have to push-start the deuce in order to pump air into the tires of the four-wheeler and then start the four-wheeler off the deuce power. When we get back, we play more Bible games with the Pathfinders. After Jeremy and I clean burns again, we get to go to bed.

Dec. 21: 5am worship. [groan] Tekoa and I don´t get out of bed this time. Later we hear that the lady Pathfinder leader from Tasba Pain prayed in Miskito that God would forgive ¨the ones who don´t speak Miskito and are still asleep.¨ I want to tell her that the reason I´m tired is that I´ve been busy trying to save people´s lives recently . . . but I don´t bother. Jeremy and I go to clean our patient´s leg and find Janet, the nurse, back in town and there ahead of us. We´re relieved she´s taking control of the situation.
We go to the church for Pathfinder events. We haven´t been there for 5 minutes when Barney, our friend who works at the Adventist radio station in Francia Sirpi, comes and tells us that his son Sam is sick. The 14-month-old baby is vomiting and having diarrhea, which is a serious concern because he´s been delicate ever since he was born. He´s lethargic and I´m worried he´s dehydrated. We talk to Janet and another missionary nurse, Marilyn, and decide to take him to Waspam in Marilyn´s truck. The doctors take blood and stool samples to test and then try to start an IV on him. He´s tiny, he´s dehydrated, and I can´t see any veins in his arm where the doctor is fishing. Sam is terrified. It hurts to watch. They finally decide to try oral rehydrating salts first.
Jeremy and I leave Sam at the hospital and come home. We rest a little, then go to the Community Center and wait for the pathfinders to come in for the night. As they´re walking back from the church, some drunk teenagers from Francia try to pick fights with the Pathfinder boys and walk up close to the Pathfinder girls, scaring them into thinking they´re going to be molested. After we get everyone into the Center, the drunkards hang around outside setting off firecrackers and throwing rocks through our windows. It takes forever to get my girls calm enough to sleep.

Dec. 22: Worship this morning is even earlier than 5am. Tekoa and I stay in bed - we´re past caring whether we get prayed for in a pointed manner. Help get the kids off to their homes and clean up the church and Community Center. Work on sorting through our Christmas give-away bags all day. In the late afternoon, I go for my usual physical therapy with Joseas and discover that his blood pressure is through the roof - 184/106. I go get Janet and help her give him Furosemide, IV, to bring it down. Then I go help her care for the burn patient again. Throw a birthday party for Rachel in the evening.

Dec. 23: Wake up at 12:30am not feeling right. Sit near the bathroom for a few hours, then go back to bed. Wake up around 4am to throw up. Should have expected to get sick - I´ve been too stressed for too long. I go to Teekamp with everyone else to give away our Christmas bags, because I don´t want to miss out. I end up spending a lot of time in the outhouse there, but it´s worth it to see all the happy faces of people getting new clothes, shoes, soap, towels . . .

Dec. 24: Our Christmas at the mission house. Rachel spends all day cooking. I help a little, as I´m able. We eat a big dinner together and play the white elephant gift exchange game. I end up with a machete, which is exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

Dec. 25: In the morning we follow the Nicaraguan tradition of giving gifts of food on Christmas. We go to our friends´ houses with bags of cookies, and we stay and visit with them for a while. In the afternoon, we leave for Puerto Cabezas. Bridget´s parents are flying in for a visit on the 26th, and we want to be there to pick them up. On the way, we take the opportunity to jump off the suspension bridge in Sesin into the river 20 ft below. It´s fun - but by the time we get to Port, my ears hurt really bad, and I have a fever. I stay on my cot in the mission house listening to Christmas music and feeling sorry for myself while everyone else goes to internet and talks to their parents.

Dec. 26: I wake up feeling better and go spend all day (literally) on the internet.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Miss you all. My thoughts are with you, at home in the snow, as I bake in the sun here. I´m hoping for a more restful week coming up.

Joseas

As I mentioned in one of my recent blogs, I´ve been doing physical therapy with a young man named Joseas. Dawn told me about him when I first got here - how he had gone to the States for open heart surgery and hadn´t had proper care while he was recovering here, resulting in him not being able to walk. Becky and Kathilee did some exercises with him while they were here, and Dawn was hoping I would continue.

One day I went to visit Joseas with Christina. While we read and colored with him, I observed his legs. For some reason I had been thinking that he was nearly paralyzed, but I saw that I was wrong - he moved his legs easily. Jeremy helped him get to church for an afternoon presentation and reported that he could stand up if he also supported himself with his arms. I began to believe that he could walk if we just made his legs a little stronger.

I talked to Ruth and asked her to help. She had a physical therapy internship recently and will be attending Loma Linda next year for PT. We asked Becky what they had been doing for him and tried to get in contact with a physical therapist in the States. In the meantime, Ruth and I started exercises based on what she knew.

We discovered that his legs were weak from not being used in so long, and his ankles were turned in. They were stiff from disuse and wouldn´t point out like normal ankles should. Their condition was making it hard for him to balance when he stood. The first day we visited him, we asked if he could walk by himself. He stood up to show us, which scared me. I stood next to him to catch him if he started to fall. Sure enough, within three steps he fell forward onto his knees. We got his walker out for him and watched him use it. He leaned on it heavily with his hands and just shuffled his legs to move forward. We knew we were in for a lot of work.

Ruth and I started a routine - three times a week we stretched and working his legs to build muscles, and we pushed and pulled on his ankles to increase their range of motion. We also had him practice walking from time to time - we had him exaggerate bending his knees to correct the shuffling problem.

We´ve kept that routine for over a month now. Last Monday we stretched with him as usual and then brought out the walker. He was leaning heavily on it, hanging on for dear life it seemed, and we wanted him to stop. Ruth told him to let go of the walker and practice standing up straight for a minute. Slowly he let go and straightened. Then we asked him to take a step forward. Tentatively he bent one knee up and moved his foot forward. Then he stepped again. And again. We stayed with him and kept the walker in front of him in case he started falling. But he didn´t fall. He kept walking.

About halfway around the room it hit me - Joseas is walking! By himself! We´re not touching him - he has the strength to stand by himself! He can keep his balance by himself! We reached the point we had started from and suddenly Ruth realized it too. ¨Joseas!¨ she exclaimed, ¨You just walked around the whole room by yourself!¨

Tears filled my eyes and Ruth´s. We could hardly believe what we had just seen. And Joseas? He stood up straight and laughed - just laughed. It was the happiest sound I have ever heard.

Last Friday night Joseas gave his testimony in church. He walked to the front of the church independently, with Ruth and me at his side. He thanked God that he is getting better now and encouraged the church to pray and trust in God. After church, he stood up with Ruth and me to go home, and his father brought his wheelchair over to take him home. But Joseas told his dad, ¨I don´t need that. I´ll walk to the door by myself.¨ And he did.

Joseas still walks slowly. He has to have us with him in case he loses his balance. And he can´t walk far - he gets tired pretty quickly. But he can walk, and he´s going to keep walking and getting better. God has really floored me on this one. He just used two people with a spoonful of training between them to get a man out of a wheelchair and onto his feet. All I can say is, I had an AMAZING Thanksgiving. Hope you did too. :)