The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations

We called her over a month before our already-booked flight to confirm she would be present in clinic. The OB/GYN for our airline out of Africa verbalized that the 36 week gestation limit for travel was correct and that we could have a consultation in her office the day before flying home to the US to obtain a letter of permission.  The reason for the inquiry was that our colleague missionary with much personal pregnancy experience had been illegally detained at the airport in N’Djamena some years ago. She was prevented from flying because she appeared greater than 27 weeks gestation and the airport refuses to let women fly after that time. So I breathed a huge sigh of relief after the phone call with the doctor and continued to work here in Béré during the summer.  My pregnancy passed uneventfully in Béré, except for a bout of malaria at 28 weeks. I feared for the baby when my fever reached 103.6 but mercifully I defervesed quickly. We were immensely thankful it w...

Today Linguisa (aka Little Link as the name means Portuguese small sausage) died. He was the baby in our house (aka kitty kingdom). Gabriel found him about two months ago dirty and flea-covered wandering around the compound. So he took him, cleaned him, fed him, and then Linguisa followed us like a shadow incessantly. He was never content unless he was by our sides and even just last night spent quality time with Papa Gabriel in front of the charcoal fire watching the beans cook and the bread rise. But then we think he took a fall of death. You see, we don’t have normal tranquil kitties. We have gangsta kitties who are not content to just hang out on our spacious back porch. No, several of them busted a hole in our screen and escaped. We patched it with more screen and then cardboard but still those gangsta kitties would bust through. But Linguisa wouldn’t escape for the outside, no, he would scale the screen to the top of the metal roof and then climb into the 10 inch space ...

They pulled her out of a rusty old pickup truck. She was clearly of the more well to do class given she didn’t come in on an ox cart or motorcycle like the majority of our patients unable to walk. The family carried her out of the vehicle using a blanket as a stretcher and deposited her on the gurney. Since she looked only half cognizant, we brought her straight to the OR. I started barraging the sister with questions and leafing through the carnet as the nurses started IV lines. She was supposedly 8 months pregnant and was transferred from a hospital at least 4 hours away. The reason for referral was, according to the sister, that they did not have a cesarean kit available for the patient. As I looked through the carnet I saw she was admitted 17 days previous with a blood pressure of 210/120. And there she stayed for 17 days being treated with oral antihypertensives, some of which are known to be contraindicated in pregnancy. Then two days prior to her transfer, she was give...

Comeback I found her thrashing on the examination table in the labor room. The time was around 1am, and I had been called to see her by the maternity nurse who said a woman was convulsing. She had had no prenatal care and her family knew nothing about the statuts of her pregnancy other than that they thought she was around 8 months pregnant. Her chest heaved with each breath and I could hear the crackles in her lungs without stethoscope. She would not respond to questioning and was barely conscient. Her blood pressure was 140/90. Eclampsia with pulmonary edema and impending respiratory failure. This lady was going to die. I grabbed the fetal doppler and found a normal fetal heart rate. At least if I couldn’t save her, I might be able to save her baby. I heard a fetal heart beat in the normal range. So we kicked into high gear. We ran her gurney as fast as we could to the OR. Her respirations were becoming more and more labored. Time was slipping through our fingers and she ...

The moon shone bright in the dark desert sky as I scurried across campus to maternity. The nurse had called me for a lady at term with abdominal pain. The nurse could not hear the fetal heart sounds. Our handheld fetal Doppler’s have all been broken for the last two months. So the nurses use the antiquated metal fetascope and claim they can hear the fetal heart from time to time. I brought the portable ultrasound machine to the lady’s bedside. She had a scar on her belly they told me was from a c section her last pregnancy performed for an unknown reason. She had had no prenatal care this time around. I placed the probe on her belly and searched. I searched and searched, and I simply could not find this baby. Her belly was large but upon both feel and ultrasound I just could not find that baby. I saw a fleshy mass in her lower abdomen and bowel in her upper abdomen.  Her belly was distended, tender on palpation, and without a smooth normal gravid uterus feel nor the knobby bo...

That afternoon, the sheep met all together in the garden of the farm. One of the rams had told Retriever about the meeting earlier in the day, but she had misunderstood and thought they were inviting her to the meeting. When she arrived at the meeting, however, she was greeted by angry and uninviting faces. One of the rams told her and Labrador that if they stayed at the meeting, she would have to answer to them and be responsible for everything that happened. Retriever didn’t really like meetings anyways, especially when conducted in the language of the sheep, so they left. She knew she would find out the purpose of the meeting soon enough. That soon enough came just a few days later when another unsigned letter arrived on her desk. This letter stated that they were sure that Chow was continuing to work from home. Therefore she had until the next day to vacate the town with “her accomplice,” the Beagle who lived in her house and also helped on the farm. If Chow was not gone ...

Once upon a time, in a land far away The Shepherd created a working-sheep farm to help the sheep of the arctic tundra. This farm, called Banana, is in a desolate land, a land where no one wants to go and few are brave enough to go. The winds blow bitter and cold throughout much of the year, and in season, the snow comes thick and heavy. The road to this farm is long and difficult to traverse, full of holes at baseline and heavily-peppered with snow drifts waiting to entrap vehicles on their way during the time of the snow. In such a harsh environment, the sheep of this land are hardy and strong. Suffering is no stranger to them. The diseases from the bitter cold and snow are rampant. To begin to alleviate some of this suffering, the sheep farm was created.  The Shepherd calls dogs to help run the sheep farm. Some have specialized skills, most have willing hearts, and all have come as a result of The Shepherd’s call. The dogs come from far and wide, lands of warmth and mou...