Dear Friends and Family Jenna and I just returned from 3 weeks in Shea. James has been in and out doing some medivacs and other things. I have so many stories to share from the last three weeks that I could keep you reading for an hour, but I'll try to keep it short. Jenna has been getting a serious introduction to medical work for one so young. She loves to be in the clinic with me and sit on my lap while I'm talking to patients. She has a soft heart for sick babies and wants to hold their hands and play with them (much to the consternation of her mother!). I feel torn because I don't want her getting some of the contagious things that patients have, but neither do I want to give them the impression that we don't want to associate with them. So we've reached a compromise, and Jenna has been getting a lot of extra scrubbing in private. My eyes are really being opened to the true needs of the people. I'm sure a bigger picture will emerge as we experience their culture more and see how they live. So far, I'm a bit overwhelmed by what I see. The village has about 400 occupants, not all living within the village proper. Last week I had 33 patients. I'm seeing what a terrible scourge alcoholism is. The parents with this problem spend more of their day drinking rather than farming. In certain families, all the kids are hungry and malnourished. The mothers drink home brewed alcohol while they are breastfeeding and don't eat healthfully themselves. Their babies are thin and malnourished. Then when they become ill they are really sick. On top of the whole problem of alcoholism is the problem of drinking water. We're supposed to be in the middle of rainy season, but it hasn't been raining. It's very dry and some families are drinking stagnant pond water. These ponds are very dirty and the cows and pigs also drink from these ponds. People don't boil the water either. They also don't wash their hands before they eat and eat with their hands. A good number of the kids under 3 appear to have worms. One particular family lives out in the bush about 4 hours walk from the village center. They don't have a house, just some type of leaf shelter. They have at least 6 kids, all with sad eyes and dejected expressions. The parents are both alcoholics. We sent out the 12 year old girl for suspected Leishmaniasis. She had 5 sores on her legs, one of which she had had for three months and was over 2 inches in diameter. I tried treating the sores with some generic topical medication in the clinic, but it didn't seem to respond. So James took her to Lethem to get IV medication. I also sent out the 10 month old infant to Lethem with the mother from the same family as well because he was weak and dehydrated. He had had a bout of malaria and a couple of bouts of diarrhea and vomiting, all within the last month. The 3 year old boy in the same family also has a sore on his leg, but I'm hoping it can be treated locally and we won't have to send him out as well! These children are so hungry. The mother confessed to me they had nothing to eat since the father had gone out a couple of weeks earlier to Lethem with the sick daughter. Thankfully, a group from the US had left two big bins of food and I was able to give them a whole bunch of supplies that will hopefully last the children, until the parents return. It just makes you want to cry when you see how some people live. Most of the families don't live this way, but there are some who are destitute, and living in extreme poverty. The poor families appear to grow only cassava and bananas on their farms. There's lots of room for agriculture education. There's currently a region wide outbreak of diarrhea and vomiting in children under two years of age. It has been so rampant that the regional field hospital has been running short of liquid medications. In Shea it appears that the problem may be slowing down. I've been trying to spread the word to parents to not wait to bring the children in for treatment. We had to evacuate 3 babies in the last month due to severe dehydration. Two weeks ago we flew to a village 15 minutes flight away from Shea. Friday night the parents of a sick infant in Shea both went out to a drinking party. Concerned villagers told me the baby was getting worse, but the parents didn't bring it back to see me (for whatever reason). Sabbath morning James and I flew to Sand Creek to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the church. In the hours that we were gone, the baby took a turn for the worst. Still, the mother waited for us to return on Sunday. As soon as I arrived back in Shea, they met us at the airstrip and said, "Please come, a baby is dying, It's getting cold." I went up to the clinic to find this very dehydrated and weak infant. It had a fever, but I was still able to give it medication by mouth and it was still breastfeeding. There was also another child with a fever and abdominal infection who needed to go at the same time so James rushed off to Lethem with both of them. Unfortunately, we found out that the dehydrated baby died 18 hours later at the Lethem hospital. James flew the mother and baby back to the village for the funeral. I cried when they put that small box in the ground. That baby should not have died. I kept thinking, "If only I had IV supplies... If only we hadn't been out of the village... If only the parents had brought her in sooner... If only they had gotten an IV on the baby when it arrived in Lethem". There are a lot of "What-If's" in this kind of situation. We have emphasized to the villagers that in future if we happen to be out of the village, to please try to contact us on the radio and we will come. We don't want to lose more babies while they wait for us to come back. The good news is that the 3 year old boy with the abdominal infection is doing better. He will have to undergo surgery at some future time to completely solve his problem. Everywhere we go there are physical and spiritual needs. We're getting ready to come back to the States to have our second child. We're excited because we haven't been back in over a year, but we're reluctant to leave our post of duty. Sincerely Joy 121 Durban Backlands Georgetown, Guyana 011-592-629-5141 www.guyanaaviationevangelism.org 874 South McDonald SW McDonald, TN 37353 1 (423) 473-1841 or 1 (423) 473-1842 |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.