Driving, ME?

It is now Thursday night in Mubende Uganda.  We have power at our hotel, for now, but not water. (This is Jill, and while I began reading this blog to proof it, we now have no power as well.)  It went out in the middle of showers this evening.

Today, we went back to Kachungwa for our second day of clinics there.  We saw another large group of people ending up with 640 patients seen over the two day period.  

We found out that the family of the little girl that passed away was having a burial ceremony for her today.  We found someone to direct us to their home.  I kid you not, that we drove for 30 minutes on roads that I am sure an automobile has not been down in years.  We got to a point that I asked our driver not to drive any further.  It looked like it could rain and I was sure, that if we went further, we’d get stuck in the middle of Nat Geo Africa as it got dark.  It struck us how far this family had traveled to our clinic yesterday.  We had told them to go home and come back at 5:00pm, but there is no way that they could have gotten home and back in that amount of time.  It had to be 8-10 miles.

Pretty soon after our lunch break, I heard Jill say in a concerned voice “Jay?”.  I looked up from the patient that I was treating to see 3 men carrying in an unconscious man.  They laid him on a wicker mat at the front of the church that we were working in.  It reminded me of the men lowering their sick friend through the roof to see Jesus.  Not that I am comparing myself to Jesus, but the men helping their friend to get care.  This was Paul.  He is 34 years old, speaks English but is barely conscious at my initial exam.  He had a good pulse but it was fast.  He felt VERY hot and had a temperature greater than 102.  He had been sick for a few days and actually had started malaria treatment through our clinic yesterday.  We quickly got an IV started and gave him IV rocephin (an antibiotic for pneumonia) and a shot of malaria medicine.  I tried to sit him up to take some tylenol and he almost passed out again before he could swallow them.  We watched him in our clinic for a few hours.  His fever came down and he was able to walk again.  Here I was thinking about how we get him to the hospital and it turns out that we were doing everything for him that the hospital would do.  Obviously, I am having to adjust my thinking of hospital vs no hospital.  I was just a little gun shy after the death yesterday.  Paul was REALLY sick, and could very well have died with out intervention.  

God used us to help him today.  He is actually an associate pastor at the church in Kachungwa.

We (Africa Renewal Ministries) are helping this lady to get some care.  She is an albino and has no pigment in her skin.  She has a very large skin cancer growing on the side of her face.  She was going to the National Referral Hospital today with funds provided by ARM.  Please keep her in your prayers.

I saw a boy named Innocent today.  He is 17 years old and weighs around 65lbs.  He looks like he is about 10!  He has a VERY large spleen and is likely chronically ill from malaria.  His family has no way to get to medical care.  His problem is not considered an emergency, so if we sent him to the hospital today, they would have sent him home to return another day.

You are not going to believe this, but I drove home to Mubende today!  The van has the driver seat on the R side and we drive on the L side of the road.  This is a little confusing, but I think that the only problem I had was trying to use the signal on the L side of the steering column.  Their blinkers work from the right side.  

My passengers were not concerned at all!?!?!

We have run out of some medicines.  We are hoping to restock on malaria medicine by tomorrow.  We will be running a children’s clinic in Mubende (different location) tomorrow.

Thanks for all of your prayers and continued support.

Jay