Friday March 23, 2012
Day 14
Today we held clinic in Medina for about 5 hours. Phillip
and I acted as the doctors with Dr. Tom running between the two of us as a
translator of sorts while overseeing our work. It was CRAZY, but even more so
exciting to be calling all the shots. At the same time though, it was very
nerve racking and frustrating because the translators were so few and I didn’t
want to miss anything. It wasn’t until after about the 5th or 6th
patient, that I had to remind myself again T.I.A. !! Anything is better than
nothing and nothing is EVERYWHERE.
One lady came in with “the boil” that “hot her leg and make
it warm”. When I raised her skirt she had an abscess the size of a baseball
that was necrotic and smelly. I told her to “wait small” while I went to ask
Dr. Tom if we had any wound care supplies. He looked at me with a puzzled face
that told me he clearly did not know. “Let me go check to see what we brought,”
he replied. Soon enough he came back with a Ziploc bag full of 4x4 gauze and a
roll of Kurlex with some tape and scissors. “Here you go,” he said “Do what you
can.”
For a moment I panicked. “No gloves?!” I thought. I’m sorry
but this is not something that I will EVER be able to chalk up to T.I.A.! Again
I tell the lady to “wait small” while I leave her to go search for gloves. I
ask a couple of the nurses with no success. Finally I interrupt Phillip’s room
to scavenge. In the corner, in front of an open window sat a dust-covered box
of size large latex gloves. Thank goodness! I snatched up a pair and shook them off. As I placed them on
my hands, I brushed them across my scrubs and noticed the dirt that they left
behind. All I could think was “it can’t be worse than the dirt that’s under my
fingernails”...
So now, on top of being limited on knowledge and supplies,
the nurse asks if he can watch so he will know what to do next time.
Seriously?! I am hardly qualified to be doing wound care myself much less
instructing someone else on what to do! The thought that my actions could shape
the type of care that many others receive from this nurse long after I’m gone
crossed my mind briefly and then again I was reminded T.I.A., you take what you
can get…and right now it was me, a dirty pair of gloves and a bag of 4x4’s or
the mud encrusted leaves that the “country doctor” had put over her leg. I
decided I would prefer the dirty gloves with clean gauze and inexperienced
hands too.
It is so easy for me to get caught up in the every day
responsibilities of my job that after a while I begin to feel responsible for
the bad and want to take the glory for the good. More often than not though;
it’s the responsibility issue that troubles me the most. I feel the weight of
having to “save every life” or make every person better. We struggle a lot
with it in the peds ward when at least a handful of kids every week don’t go
home or it’s “just another day” when 2-3 infants expire. It’s not a mentality
that I’m used to and it’s not one that I like to accept, but again I have to
learn to be satisfied with knowing that it is beyond my control and just as it
is for all other things, it’s better left to God.
I don’t know how that lady will come through with her leg
ulcer, but I am certain that the road of healing will be long and painful and I
suppose it may never have even begun if she hadn’t shown up today. I refuse to
take glory for any outcome, though, because I know that my actions were not my
own but were guided by someone much more powerful than myself. I pray that God
guide all those in the clinics here who will continue to heal once we have left
and most especially for all who use healthcare as a ministry of healing- that
they may always remember that they are merely an instrument of His will.
"And now, O Lord, you are our Father, yet truly, we are clay. And you are our Maker, and we are all the works of your hands."
Isaiah 64:8
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