A rollercoaster of a week

Hello All,

Thank you for the lovely replies I have received. Wow, what a week, I don´t know where to start..... alot has happened since last week when I wrote. What has been going on with you? How is England or where ever you are?

I would love to start the blog on a good note, but I´m afraid this week has been tough. There have been smiles as well as tears but I want to be honest with you.

The best part of the week has got to be coming home to the beautiful girls. They show me such love and just accept me for who I am. They are fantastic. I´ve shared much joy and laughter with them. Taught one of the younger girls to play snap and it was so funny because every time the cards matched she didn´t want to say snap. She looked at either Kat or I and told us to say snap. I didn´t quite understand why until at the end she had no cards and with a big smile on her face declared that she had won!

The girls love to hear what has gone on at the hospital every day. Some of them are very squeemish and it is very amusing. I´d love to upload some photos for you but this computer has no disk reader on. Sorry.

John very kindly took us to the hospital on the first day. It is the other side of the city to where we live. We arrived to be told we would be working 7am -6pm Monday to Friday and 8am-12pm on Saturdays. On top of this we would be doing one night shift a week and would be expected to work the full day before and the full day afterwards. I know that Drs in England used to have to work 36 hours on the trot but trying to do that in a language you don´t really understand was a shock! I decided quite quickly I needed to learn to like caffeine. The next day we talked to the Captain (The head of the hospital) and he agreed we could work 7.30am-5pm Monday to Friday for the first two weeks. After this we will have to do more hours. I know I would learn alot doing nights but please pray I only have to work 24 hours on the trot and not 36 hours! The day still starts at 5:30am as we have an hour bus ride to the hospital.

There is about 2 people in the whole hospital that speak English. My Spanish is improving, my understanding is coming on a lot quicker than my speaking but hey. I learn so much better in an apprentice style than in a textbook style. One annoying thing is that as my communication skills are slightly lacking, it is assumed that I am dumb and I don´t know anything. When I come across people in England who can´t speak; either through language barrier or disability, I hope I will treat them better. A great thing with Medicine is that alot of words are derived from Latin or Greek and so if you say a word in a Spanish accent you may well be right!

For the first three weeks I am assigned to Paediatrics. Medicine here is so different to back home. Working with limited resources is interesting! Everything is recycled including gloves. (Not that they are worn that often). There is very little equipment and the system is very paternalistic. There is a 10 year old girl at the minute who has a tropical disease and is dying. If the disease was found earlier she could have been treated. How often that is the story. She is so beautiful and her smile is so gentle. Due to the way medicine is done here, she thinks she will get better. She is also being started on medicine that would stop the disease in the acute setting but won´t make any difference to her now and she is in organ failure. It is a dichotomy because I see, hear, feel medical signs here that I only read about in textbooks in England which is great for my learning but at the same time it normally means the child is dying.

On Wednesday I was allowed to get my hands dirty and do some wound care management and help out in the emergency room. Doctors here tend to do wound care management rather than nurses. A traditional health belief here is that eggs make wounds better, a women put egg on a wound on her face. When the bandage was taken of it was not a pretty site.

Unfortunately on Thursday and Friday both Kat and I have been ill. If we were at Spring Harvest we certainly would have been quarantined. The joys of being abroad, my stomach is beginning to settle down. I managed 2 and a half hours at the hospital yesterday. Hopefully by Monday we will both be better and can get down to things.

God Stuff:

This verse from Psalm 27 has been my prayer and my anthem for this week:
13 I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.
14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

I came expecting to work in a mission hospital with Christian doctors with a Christian ethos. Very few of the doctors or nurses are Christian, they would love more of them to be but Christians doctors and nurses are difficult to come by. Due to this the approach of the doctors to the patients, me and other staff is very different to what I expected and this has required some head adjustment.

God has really been showing me the cost of being abroad and how tough it can be. At the minute I am certainly not looking at the future through rose tinted spectacles. This week there was a celebration service for my grandfather who died just after Christmas. I missed his wedding when I was on my gap year and I was very sad I couldn´t be there this week. Alot of my family would have been there, I had an email to say I was mentioned which brought a smile to my face.

At the minute Kat is skyping with Fiona, this is making me smile. Oh the joys of technology!

God has really been my rock and being here with Kat and coming home to Jon and Linda and the girls is fantastic. Jon as a suprise came and picked us up. It is great to be with friends. Church is quite different here but have some sermons to listen to and lots of music too.

Praise God that we are still safe and that Spanish learning is getting better.
Please pray for language and for stuff at the hospital to improve.
I believe that if I can show the love of God to each patient whether through a smile or a kind word then my time here will have been successful.


I will sign off here. Sending you all lots of love

Zara xx