Not Good-bye

So we made it back to the US Sunday evening and a sense of 'normal' life has returned.  Leaving Tenwek on Saturday was a very bittersweet moment for both Emily and I.  On one hand we were so excited to be heading home to our family and friends and let's face it, America.  On the other hand it was very hard to say farewell to the people we had we met there and even that life and culture we had grown to love.  As we were bidding adieu, I was reminded of something my great-great-grandmother used to say everytime we left from visiting her and it was echoed through the mouth of Dolly, our "surrogate grandmother" at Tenwek as we departed:  "It is not good-bye.  It is only see you later."  Such a true statement!  As we all hugged bye, it was so refreshing to be told that over and over again and some of the interns even told me that if we didn't get the chance see each other again in this life, they would see me in Heaven.  What a heart-warming statement to hear!

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. - Numbers 6:24-26

Watching the beautiful sunrise atop Mt. Motigo on our last morning

There were several times during our last couple of weeks there where I would look around me and just think 'How did I get here?!' and not in a bad way.  Emily and I talked about those moments where it hits you: Here we are, small town girls from Kentucky and West Virginia and we are in a hospital room in Bomet, Kenya with mosquito nets or at a duka in town shopping for material to make a skirt-wrap or at an orphanage listening to 50 kids sing "Father Abraham" for us and all we can think about is how did our lives lead us here.  I remember growing up I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go, but I always felt this voice saying 'You're going to do more than you can imagine!' like God was telling me he had something special planned for my life, just as he does for all of his children.  Listening to stories of missionaries in church as a child I never did think that I would go to the kinds of places they go and do the kinds of things they do.  Sure, I thought they were awesome but it never even crossed my mind that I would someday want to do that.  Finally at 25, God pointed me in that direction and it led me to the most amazing place-Tenwek Hospital.  What a terrific starting place!  All of the people there, the missionaries, the Kenyan doctors and interns, and the patients, helped to teach me and helped me to grow as a person, a Christian, and as a PA.  I don't even know where I could begin to thank them and return the favor.  Thank you all!

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. - Psalm 84:5

Emily and I saying farewell to our trip - what a great traveling partner!

As I do get back into a normal routine here at home (which apparently means preparing for 2 exams, writing a paper, and logging patients), it's the simple things that remind me how blessed I am.  However, I don't think blessed is the right word though because the people of Kenya feel just as blessed as I do and look at how different our lives are.  I've been enjoying driving my car all around the state of Kentucky, eating a delicious variety of meals, shopping inside a warm mall playing Christmas music buying things I don't really need and not to mention my soft, cozy bed with a space heater to warm up my room this winter.  It is a wonderful privilege to live in the USA and have all the nice amenities available to us that we do have, even during a time of economic turmoil for lots of people.  Seeing how some of the people live in Kenya and witnessing how gracious they are for everything they have, I believe they are even more blessed than me because they really understand what it means to trust in the Lord with all your heart and know that every thing in life comes from Him.  They have humbled me and I hope I always remember this feeling.  I thank God for every gift He has ever given me!

He must become greater; I must become less. - John 3:30

 

 The jeeps had a wonderful trip as well!

During our first week, one of the visiting members said to us "Once Africa gets in your blood, it doesn't come out".  Needless to say, we quickly learned what he meant.  I loved every moment that I spent in Kenya and I feel like I'm already counting down the days until I can return even though it may be a few years away.....deep breaths family, I'm not going anywhere just yet.....except England in 6 short weeks! :)

The Lord is my  light and my salvation - whom shall I fear? - Psalm 27:1

God Bless everyone!

Roughin' it

We have ended another full week at Tenwek and our last full week here.  We were without the internet for the past week as well.  I think God decided we needed to “rough it” for our last week here after having such an easy go of things the rest of the trip.  It was definitely the most isolated from home I have felt since being here, but at least we still had great company to keep us entertained.

Emily and I ventured out to another orphanage last Friday afternoon.  We received a tour of the grounds and then the kids sang songs for us before we handed out gifts of candy and stickers.  The kids were so much fun and really enjoyed taking pictures before we left.  Their faces light up when they see their photos on the screens of our cameras and they just want to keep taking pictures.  We really enjoyed our time there and I can’t wait to come back with a suitcase full of clothes and toys for those kids next time.

 The girls' building

 Patsy, Rachel and I with the entire group after their singing

 This little girl was so precious!

 Kids loving the camera!

Our previous weekend also consisted of making delicious treats with our new friends here at Tenwek, Laura, Carolyn and Joanna.  We enjoyed homemade pizza together and then Laura brought a little England to us by making scones while Carolyn decided to try her hand at making homemade pop-tarts with a little twist….sweet potato filling!  When you have an excess of sweet potatoes in your house, you got to find a lot of new and exciting ways to use them in recipes.   She had made us all sweet potato cookies earlier in the week which were phenomenal, so Emily had the idea of sweet potato poptarts.  I gotta say they were pretty good and we all had a blast cooking it up in the kitchen!  Also, I’m going to LOVE scones in England in February! Carolyn and Joanna-thank you for your warm hospitality and cooking for us when we needed a break from the guesthouse.  We are going to miss our new friends!

 Carolyn and Emily with the monster of all sweet potatoes

 Laura and Joanna showing off their amazing scones

 Final product: Sweet potato poptart with a cinnamon glaze

I also want to share some pictures from our Sunday adventure into the town of Bomet with Cecilia, a visiting surgical resident.  We went to do some shopping at the supermarket as well as search for me a wrap I have been wanting since I got here.  I love the fabric the women use to make very versatile wraps: a wrap around your waist, your shoulder, your head, or to carry your child. It's awesome!  Needless to say, we were very much out of our comfort zone shopping in this town....it's not your typical shopping scenery.

 The Chemist shop aka The Pharmacy

 Stands where fresh produce is typically sold

 The supermarket we shopped at, Radiant Supermarket

Shops right outside Tenwek

Emily got to celebrate her 26^th birthday while in Kenya.  We celebrated a couple days early with a large table filled with great food and terrific guests.  It is amazing how quick you get to know people here and form relationships.  It was a fantastic time of fellowship and celebrating Emily’s special day of birth!

 Dinner of 14 random people brought together from all over the US

 Emily with all of her birthday cards

 Emily and I with Vince and Dolly, adoptive grandparents :)

The past week has been an absolute blast for Emily and I.  We have really enjoyed our time here working with all of the staff in our departments.  The Pediatric team of interns and consultants was absolutely amazing!  I am going to miss every single one of them and I am forever grateful for them taking the time to teach me.  I also have a praise to share: my little guy I talked about earlier that I saw in the hospital every day for nearly three weeks (not including the weeks he had been here prior to me joining the Peds service) finally went home!  He was all smiles his last few days here and I pray that he keeps improving.

 NG tube taken out and he went home, Praise God!

 Maureen, Peds MO intern, and I on my last day of work

As I left the hospital today for my last day of actually working, I had probably the most adorable thing happen to end my time here.  I was headed down the hallway to the stairs when a woman and her daughter (probably about 8 years old) came around the corner.  The daughter caught sight of me, her eyes widened, she took in a quick deep breath like you do when you’re in shock about something, and she silently says, “A mzungu!”  I couldn’t help but smile!  She started smiling and wanted to shake my hand, her face just in awe like I was a magical creature you only hear about but never see.  There are some people who really are amazed by white people and they take pictures so they can share with their friends and family back home how they saw one.  (Yes, Emily really had that happen in the surgery ward.) Either way, it brightened my day even more to know that me, just a silly white person aka “a mzungu”, brightened hers.  I’m going to miss this place….

 

God Bless everyone!

Red

December 1^st = Happy World AIDS Day!  Over 35 million people worldwide have this disease and 24.5 million of those live in Sub-Sarahan Africa.  How amazing that we are in Kenya on this special awareness day!  This morning we got to listen to a presentation on the status of AIDS here in Africa, specifically in Kenya and at Tenwek, and how they are working to reduce transmission from infected mothers to their unborn babies.  It was a great presentation by one of the MO interns and it’s wonderful to see how this country and this hospital are working so hard to bring that transmission risk down to 0.

Later this morning, we were invited to attend the World AIDS Day Celebration here at the hospital in the church.  They had a fantastic guest speaker who is a pastor and gave a great speech on how we should not discriminate against those who have AIDS, especially as a church.  “People can be hurt by the church,” he stated.  He told a story about a group of women who had been prostitutes and all of them had AIDS.  For so long, they believed they would not be accepted by a church congregation because of their former lifestyle and their disease status.  The church where this speaker was pastor decided to be the kind of church that all churches should be, a church that would reach out to these ladies, show them love and acceptance, and not judge them for past mistakes or the disease.  He said it best when he said “The church is suppose to be a place of hope and restoration….of healing.” 

There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  We love because He first loved us.  Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.  For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.  And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.  – 1 John 4:18-21

Emily and I have had many discussions whilst here about how sad it is these days that the church and Christians have a bad connotation associated with them, especially among people our age.  We are seen as people who lay judgment on others rather than people who love others, especially those outside the church.  We are also ridiculed for being “close-minded” when we stand up for our beliefs.  It shouldn’t be this way!  Being a Christian is a GREAT thing!  Standing up for what God stands for is a GREAT thing!  We must remember to be intolerable of things which God calls us to be intolerable of in a society that tries to sway us in different directions, but we must also always remember to love the person who does the intolerable thing.  ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’ has always been a favorite saying of mine.  I may not agree with the choices of another, but I will never judge them for it.  I will continually love them, pray for them, and try to teach them about why my beliefs are different from theirs.  People will also say ‘Well, you’re not perfect and you do wrong things too so who are you to preach to me?! ’ and they think we’re hypocrites.  The best answer:  I am a sinner saved by grace!  My sin is the same as your sin.  I still say the wrong things and do the wrong things sometimes because I am only human.  Jesus is the only perfect person to walk this Earth completely sinless.  God knows I am going to continue to mess up, but because of my relationship with him He knows I will ask for forgiveness and mean it and learn from my mistakes.  It is our responsibility as brothers and sisters to keep each other accountable, to try and live in the way of Christ, but keep the judgment away when we fall short.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. – 1 Peter 4:8

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. – Romans 12:14

During the story that pastor told today and in thinking back over our conversations, I was reminded of how blessed I was to attend a church in Lexington that focused on breaking those bad connotations.  They have several community outreach programs to help those in need, but one of the more amazing ministries they have is working to rescue women who work in men’s clubs or on the streets as prostitutes around the city, bring them to a safe haven and teach them about the Lord.  Their motto is ‘Love God.  Love People.’ and they live to let people know that it doesn’t matter how you come or what your life has been like, they just want you to come to church and learn what  a relationship with God is all about.  Over the past year and especially during my time here, I have decided that it is one of my biggest goals to demonstrate this same kind of love to people.  It’s not always easy.  People will hurt me and I will get discouraged, but one thing I know is that with God all things are possible.

Live in harmony with one another.  Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.  Never be wise in your own sight. – Romans 12:16

God Bless everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy (late) Thanksgiving!  This past week has been busy with starting in Peds and all of the Thanksgiving festivities.  Emily and I were a little fearful of being really homesick and missing out on this family holiday, but the missionaries here are so warm and inviting that it felt like your typical family Thanksgiving. Plus, we ate REALLY well!  I am thankful for so much this year, but it would probably take me a million pages to list them all.  I do want to say ‘Thank You!’ to everyone back home for supporting me in this journey.  I know lots of people probably thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to go to Kenya for two months, but all of my family and friends have been absolutely amazing and I know I would not be here without all of them cheering me on with their kind words and prayers.  I’m grateful for every single one of you in my life, Thank You!

Since Thanksgiving is obviously not celebrated in Kenya, we did have to work a full week.  We got a very nice meal Thursday afternoon for lunch with the White family: chicken noodle soup (perfect for the cold, rainy afternoon we were having), green beans covered in these fantastic herbs (only green beans I’ve ever been able to enjoy), bread, and apple pie.  Then for dinner the Roberts family invited us over for turkey and dressing as well as a wonderful chocolate, pecan, and butterscotch pie.  They also streamed in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  We played the game “How well do you know the Macy’s parade and what character is that?!” because it was a little choppy video coverage, but still enjoyable.  Yesterday, we got to have the big Thanksgiving Day feast with most of the missionary families in the atrium above the surgical theaters.  It was amazing!  We followed up lunch with pie time at 5 and the movie ‘Elf’ at 7.  There was also the option to watch some college football games at the Roberts house, but we were so exhausted we went to bed early.  All of the families here act like one giant extended family and it was a fantastic day getting to experience that and feel like part of the family.  Definitely one of my top Thanksgivings!

 The Thanksgiving feast

 Celebrating Thanksgiving with our new friend, Laura

Happy 1st Thanksgiving, Laura!

 The pie table :)

The past week in pediatrics has been somewhat busy, especially in the nursery, and it’s also been an interesting learning experience.  I try to compare it to what I would be seeing at home and it doesn’t really match up.  If I were at home, I believe I would be in a clinic seeing regular check-ups and mostly acute illnesses such as ear infections.  In Kenya, I have seen whooping cough, possible enteric fever and malaria, sickle-cell disease, and lymphoma.  We also had one child who had a dog bite who was being treated for rabies.  The little boy I spent most of my time with this week has recently been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome and cannot movie his arms or legs and has constant sharp pains in his legs.  In the US, if he had been seen upon onset of his symptoms (weakness and pains in his legs), we could have done plasmaphoresis or given him IV Immunoglobulin to hopefully help.  Those are not options here so he basically does physical therapy to keep his limbs from stiffening up.  He has been in the hospital for over 20 days and now has pneumonia for the second time since being here.  We are hoping to get him over the pneumonia and home soon after, but he will basically be a quadriplegic the rest of his life.  Please pray for this little boy and his father who has been taking such good care of him in the hospital.

I’m also a little sad because one of my favorite patients to see is no longer at the hospital.  Mark introduced us to this boy named Washington who he was doing physical therapy with because he had to have one leg amputated.  He will be receiving a prosthetic leg hopefully very soon from a team in Atlanta, but for being such a young kid and having to go through something that traumatic he never was without a smile.  Once I started in Peds this week, I got to see him cruising up and down the hallway every day in his wheelchair or walking on his crutches and he smiled every time.  He even saw me from afar one morning walking up the hill towards the hospital and gave me a huge wave with his big grin – it melted my heart!  I’m glad he is home but I do miss his joyous presence.  I will also miss the Kenyan medical students, in particular Liz and Sylviah who I spent time with in both OB and Peds.  They were both wonderful help and fun to talk to, but I look forward to keeping in touch with them and hopefully seeing them again one day.

Liz and I in the nursery

We are down to just two weeks left in Kenya and Emily and I have both fallen a little ill since last night.  Please pray for a speedy recovery for both of us so that we might enjoy our last couple of weeks here fully.  Hopefully a day of laying around and watching movies will help us feel better by tomorrow :)


God Bless everyone!

Peds: My Homeland!

First day in Pediatrics and I survived without kidnapping any children :)  But I definitely considered it!  I uttered the statement I would like to kidnap the entire room of children under age 6 and one of the nurses gave me a funny look.  Apparently sarcasm does not translate well from America to Kenya.....oops!

Seriously though, I am really looking forward to the next three weeks.  Today was an orientation type day to learn how things operate in the Pediatric ward and nursery: we have morning meeting at 8 am (with all of the medical staff, we have been doing this since we got here), pre-rounding at 9 (which is where I will get my own patients to see), chai tea at 10:30 (the entire hospital pretty much stops for chai at 10:30), rounding with the consultants at 11 (the same as attending physicians in the US, we have to present our patients we see to them and make sure we are doing the right thing for the patient or get advice basically), lunch at 1, then pre-rounding/rounding in the nursery after lunch to finish up the day.  I observed all of morning rounds but did get to pre-round on one baby in the nursery.  It kinda takes a while to get familiar with the different abbreviations the medical staff uses here, so I was trying to decipher the chart and then make sure I didn't write something that wouldn't make sense to them with American-style abbreviations.  Plus, these are NICU babies which is completely unfamiliar to me I feel like.  Even though I've had some in-class training, handling newborns is a little out of my comfort zone and especially in a foreign country. However, that is why I am doing this - to learn.  I do prefer to work in clinical settings over the hospital, but I want to learn as much as I can about all things peds since it is my future job (hopefully).  This is also why I still have two more peds rotations coming when I get back to the States.

One thing I have learned already in pediatrics is that he and she are kinda used interchangeably when talking about the patients and no one seems to mind (or notice, I can't tell).  It is also difficult to tell sometimes just by initial glances if they are a boy or a girl because all children who go to school shave their heads.  This is to control lice outbreaks.  Also, clothes and colors seem to be almost neutral gender when they are younger.  There was an 8 month old boy with a pink outfit on and another 3 year old boy wearing a rather feminine yellow cardigan.  I also noticed this when we were at the orphanage our first weekend here because they did not care one way or another if it was meant to be a boys' or a girls' shirt, they just loved the new clothing.  I saw a girl at church this weekend who had on a white dress, but underneath there was a brown t-shirt and sweatpants with a power rangers jacket over the top (and not the female power rangers on the jacket I might add).  Now this could be because they believe it is really cold outside when it's 60s-70s and people dress in several layers, but I still found it to be an interesting combination.  I guess I don't have to worry about offending anyone if I say the wrong pronoun but I will still do my best to double check the chart before I say one way or the other.

We did see some very interesting cases today that are going to take a lot of work trying to decipher what exactly is going on with all these kiddos.  We also had two little ones (both under the age of 3) that we had to prepare for hospice care and another one who is a little older but has a disease that will eventually end her life as well.  There was another little girl I would have LOVED to have gotten a picture of who has pertussis (aka whooping cough) and make her the poster child in America for Vaccinate Your Children (and Adults-Get your Pertussis booster so you don't pass it on to your child/grandchid/etc.!)  She was actually doing better today they said but still coughing so hard for so long she would almost get strangled and then vomit.  And yes, I am pro-vaccines :)  Moving on....

Here are just a couple pictures I took today but I am sure there will be more to come during my time in peds because these kids are just so darn cute.  Also, please pray for safety for Mark who is sitting at the Nairobi airport about to start his long trip back home and please pray for Emily as well as she started surgery today and is going to have some long hours and lots of standing....and she might miss Mark just a little bit too.

 Liz, Peds med student, with one of the adorable kids on our ward

This is how pills are packaged for patients here.

Triplet girls born last night - the third set since we've been here!

God Bless everyone!