Happy Children’s Day

Recently, PNG celebrated World Children’s Day: a day to promote health, safety and education for all children worldwide. While we are doing our part to promote health, it still hurts my heart to see so many children in the hospital for pneumonia, malnutrition, gastrointestinal illnesses, meningitis, and cancer. Here are some of the children currently on surgical ward and how you can pray for them: 

Veselyn, age 13, has been in the hospital for over a month fighting an infection of the liver and many of the complications that have accompanied it. She has been to surgery several times and is gradually improving but continues to fight setbacks. Please pray for her as she transitions home. 

Pa, age 2, presented with a huge mass growing from his right eye requiring complete removal of the eye. It is likely retinoblastoma, a cancer of the eye seen in children. With limited access to chemotherapy and no available radiation therapy, his prognosis is not good. Please pray for him as he heals from the physical pain of surgery. Pray for his family as they process his diagnosis and what that means for his future. 

Macklyn, age 8, is a vivacious girl with a bad infection of the foot which has extended to the bones of the ankle joint. Please pray for her as she faces weeks of wound care followed by months of antibiotics to treat this severe infection. Pray that her long-term mobility will not be adversely affected. 

Thank you for partnering with us to pray for these precious children and all children around the world. Happy World Children’s Day. 

Assumptions

          We all make assumptions based on our knowledge, life experiences and cultural context. Some times those assumptions are correct, but many times our assumptions are wrong because we don’t know the whole story. I am guilty of making assumptions the same as anyone else, but one patient this month made me re-evaluate the assumptions I make. 

         On a Tuesday night, I was called in to see a middle-aged man who had been stabbed twice in the abdomen. The only history I obtained was that he was stabbed by his brother. It is quite common for family disputes over land or pigs to end in one party attacking their own family member with a machete. If my patient is a women, I tend to assume she is an innocent victim of gender-based violence which is rampant in PNG. However, if the injured patient is a man, I usually assume he was in some way partially responsible for the fight which resulted in his injury: perhaps he was intoxicated or aggravating the other party or living a less than desirable lifestyle that placed him in harm’s way. Either way, once they become my patient, I treat them according to the best practices (that we can provide) in trauma care. The person could be a criminal or a saint, but once they enter my operating theater they are a bleeding trauma patient who needs to be treated.   In this case, we spent 3 hours in the operating room repairing injuries to the liver, spleen, gallbladder and two holes in the stomach. It was a very labor-intensive case as we tried to stop the bleeding and repair all those injuries. Praise the Lord, our patient did well after surgery. As I headed home, I wondered if he would be able to understand the gift of God in sparing his life. "Maybe he will reform his ways and become a good man," I thought.  

          The next morning, I was astounded when Auntie Margaret, our OT supervisor and veteran scrub nurse gave me a big hug and thanked me for saving her brother’s life! She explained that patient D is a very close friend from her home village, akin to a brother. He is a prominent leader in the local church and had just completed building a new Sunday school room when his brother, out of jealousy, attacked and stabbed him. I was further amazed when patient D told me (on post-op day 1) that he had already forgiven his brother and would not accept any compensation (a cultural practice in which the guilty party pays restitution for the injuries inflicted and medical expenses incurred). Instead, D was praying for his brother to come to church and reconnect with God.  All my previous assumptions were blown away. Here was a God-fearing man who was gravely wounded by a close relative for doing something good and honorable, and he continues to seek a righteous attitude toward his attacker. What a perfect example of Apostle Peter’s exhortation in 1 Peter 3: 9,14-17: “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing…. But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. 'Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.' But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.” Lord, thank you for toppling my assumptions and thank you for the amazing testimony of this God-fearing man. Amen. 

Margaret and I

Lifeline

Saturday afternoon I received the call: “man stabbed in the upper arm with an arterial injury”. On the way to the hospital my mind ran through the possible scenarios. One look at the injured man confirmed my fears. He had an injury to his right brachial artery, the single vessel that feeds his dominant arm and hand. If it had been a smaller blood vessel, one with an alternative path to maintain blood flow to the hand, I would have simply tied off the injured segment. But this singular artery required a careful vascular repair in order to maintain the life giving flow of blood to his hand.  Two and a half hours later, I removed the final clamp and watched the vein graft, bridging the gap between the two ends of the injured artery, swell with pulsating blood. Relieved, I felt his radial pulse and watched his fingers turn pink again. 

Earlier this month, I attended a retreat for physicians serving internationally, such as myself, in the World Medical Mission post-resident program. We talked about many of the struggles we face working in hospitals that are short on supplies, short of manpower, but never short of patients needing help. The focus of our devotions was “Keeping Our Center”. When everything becomes chaotic and I feel like I’m spinning in circles, how do I find my center again? In essence, what is my lifeline? I realized that I often center my life around my identity as a surgeon, my identity as a missionary, or my identity as daughter/sister/friend. Although those are important parts of who I am as a person, and they can buoy me up emotionally for a little while, in the end, those identities are not the source of life that sustains me. My true center, my true lifeline is my identity as a child of God. In a wonderfully mysterious way, the shedding of Jesus’ blood washed me clean and provided a bridge so that I can connect with God and receive his life-giving spirit straight from the source. If I cut off that lifeline, I, like my patient’s hand without blood flow, am at risk of suffocating and dying spiritually. There is no alternative route. Praise God that when I am able to to spiritually reconnect to my lifeline, just like my patient on Saturday, I feel a new pulse and see signs of life returning
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