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.