Difficult decisions

There is no ICU in Galmi. Not in the sense there is back home.  They don’t have people hooked up to ventilators helping them to breath until they can breath on their own.  I haven’t even seen that in surgery.  So what to do when someone can’t breath on their own?  With the little premature baby that had the apneic spell we used a bag and mask, but you can only do that for so long.  The other premature baby, the one that passed away a few days ago – her mom had heart failure and that is why they had to deliver the baby so early.  It was an attempt to get some of the work load off the heart so the mom wouldn’t have lungs full of fluid.  Unfortunately it didn’t work.  Last night we had a lady come in with similar problems – their X-Rays would have looked similar to the one above  (I have removed all identifying marks so no one knows who this belongs to).  A heart that is way too big.  Fortunately for Today’s patient, she survived the surgery and we are hoping she will do better now that she is no longer pregnant.

There are other difficult decisions to make.  How do you treat someone with anemia who has O negative blood when there are no Donors around?  You can give them as much iron as you want, but it’s not going to do the job quickly enough to get them to heal.  You just have to pray that there will be an O negative donor soon that will be able to help out.  Even in North America there can be difficult decisions to make.  We all know that there are not enough organ donors, and that there are people on waiting lists.  In the last few years they have experimented with giving people organs from donors with know Hepatitis C.  As I said. Difficult decisions.

On the lighter side, the I saw this tree next door that looks like something out of Dr. Seuss.  I mean, just look at it – thick stump that quickly narrows and then a flower right at the top.  What sort of tree is that?  They capture water in the rainy season in big storage containers up on the hill, so they can water the plants for the rest of the year.  It is nice to not worry too much about water shortages.

James 5:14

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.