Companion

 Companion



Hurry, hurry, were we going to make it in time? Hurry, hurry, she had been pushing for several hours before I received a call from the night nurse on maternity that the fetal head was no longer advancing. 


Hurry, hurry, call the mechanician to start the generator, call the nurse anesthetist to do the spinal, call the nurse to first assist. Hurry, hurry, get her IVs in, fluid running, labs drawn, foley placed, abdomen scrubbed. Make the cuts, get the baby out, stop the bleeding. Sew the layers, oh wow, were we going to make it in time? Hurry, hurry! The moment I finished closing the fascia, I turned the needle driver over to my assist and fled the OR as fast as I could. I wasn’t sure if it was the vomit or the diarrhea I felt welling up inside of me who would win. Hurry! Hurry! As fast as I could, I hobbled home to the toilet that would be a close companion for the next few days.


Illnesses are ever pressing close to us here. Thankfully, since doctors usually make horrible patients, we try to take care of each other and give advice for and care to each other’s children. And praise God, He takes care of us and our little ones. Every day without illness is truly a blessing.


For the year of 2021, we were blessed to complete three semesters of Gabriel’s masters studies. We didn’t end up returning to Chad last summer due to the assassination of the long-standing Chadian president and rebels reportedly 100 miles from the capital city where we would have had to quarantine for a week. Our plane tickets were canceled and with much prayer, we decided to wait until after the birth of our daughter, Juliana, and the completion of Gabriel’s fall semester prior to returning. 


Upon returning, we were extremely grateful to our missionary friend, Megan, who had led a team of warriors over the course of several weeks to battle the rats who had found companionship together in our home during our year absence. The rats had found plenty of tasty treats and cozy nests among our belongings. Praise the Lord, though, our traps have remained empty since we brought baby girl to her new home in Chad.


Baby girl, like her brother before her, spends over 2/3rds of her life under a mosquito net. Over the past few months, she has discovered that her thumbs are constant companions. And thus, she is able to soothe herself to sleep while her Papa works tirelessly on his online masters classes. Big brother Elijah contents himself to water the lemon tree and himself and any thing else the hose can reach. While inside the house he contents himself to get into every bottle, bag, tool, cord, and paper that is not higher than 4 feet off the ground. We have no doors on any shelf and few shelves higher that waist height. By the grace of God, Elijah’s beloved stuffed bunny and lamby made it the 3 day journey necessary to arrive in our Chadian home. We experienced a few moments of panic that he had lost them throughout that time which were thankfully short-lived.


For the past few weeks I have had a boy on the pediatric service with an illness we pray will be short-lived. He presented with a large mass on his right jaw. X-ray confirmed that it was confined to the soft tissue, which we collectively assumed to be Burkitt lymphoma. So we sent the family to the capital city and they returned with cyclophosphamide pills that we have been carefully administering to him here (yes, crazy on multiple levels, I know). Especially for the first few day’s after his first dose, I could observe a marked change in the size of the mass every day. This unfortunate cancer companion is losing some of its grasp on this boy every day.


We are so grateful to God for the grasp that He has on us, especially here in rural Chad. 


“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Matthew 28:20

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 31, 2022 at 8:13 AM

    Yes, thank God he was able to complete some schooling and you were able to give birth in the US and get some respite. So glad the rats were gone when you got there!

    ReplyDelete

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