You may be wondering how my endeavors of palliative care are coming along. Well, my coming home from work one day and saying to Chad, "I feel great! I love this!", should be a good indicator. Don't get me wrong. It's super, duper hard. I hope last week we experienced one of the most difficult cases we will ever have to deal with. If it gets too much more challenging than that I'm not sure we'll be able to keep on. But, with his mercies new every morning...I think we will. I know I'm working right where the Lord has called me, so, with this knowledge, we'll keep keeping on.
Let me try to summarize.
I have started training 2 young Mozambican gals in the hopes that this program isn't always dependent upon me. There is a lot they can address on their own as we try to face social, psychological, spiritual and physical problems. I, or someone else, will likely always have to oversee the physical bit but we're working to try to learn many non-pharmacological interventions and the use of adjuvant medications since Tylenol, ibuprofen and aspirin are the only pain medications we have available.
We have received authorization to accept patient referrals from 1) the nutrition clinic where I have worked for the last many years and 2) a geographical area which is very much in need-- very rural with few to no health care options.
A typical week recently includes a lot of driving. Between running Nede to school twenty minutes in the opposite direction of my work I then set out on a drive anywhere between 30 min- 1 1/2 hour drive (depending on how many slow/broken down trucks I get behind and to which area exactly I'm going). This week I took this car, into areas I should not have challenged it to:
Yes, that car! (Note: the ground clearance is far from adequate for bush whacking!) In areas where the grass was nearly higher than my windshield, believe me I was praying that I wasn't going to have to call Chad and try to explain to him where we were broken down (over an hour away from him). Yes, we need a motor bike! Needless to say I'm charting new waters of a rural area which is absolutely breathtaking. I walk away feeling that, if you're in good health, the simplicity of living off the land with your family is a beautiful way of life. It's when you're not healthy that I can't imagine.
For example, the women who has either had a stroke or has a degenerative neurological disease that leaves her hardly able to walk. Thankfully she isn't in a lot of pain but in her old age she sits, watching life pass. We weren't able to admit her onto our program because she is so difficult to get to. (After driving over a mile where I should not have been driving and walking another 30 minutes after I finally said, "I'm not taking my car any further.") Practically we can't help this lady. And, she isn't as sick as so many others. She doesn't need our services. Yet.
Our next stop was to a man who was dead set that he was born in 1066. We finally convinced him that it must have been 1966. My best guess in looking at him would have put his DOB at 1915. With his paralyzed legs and blood pressure of 200/118, yes, he's on our program but there's so little we can do. We pray, "Lord have mercy." We remember him, and we pray. That is a lot.
Our next stop was a dying man being held in the arms of his wife as he coughed and sputtered. Culturally they feel they need to feed him porridge, even in the state he was in. We educated. We asked and prayed and explained the dying process. Again, we asked for mercy.
This was one day. The other patients that we see include our poster boy who's miraculously over come tuberculosis, a maxillofacial tumor and some how his enlarged heart shrinking back to almost normal size. Unfortunately he still has HIV which makes him sure to have challenges down the road. He's our greatest joy of the week. We laugh together, sing, act silly and, he's now known and that is bringing healing.
We have one other patient who looks older than the red dirt we trod. She too has suffered a stroke and just sits. Smiling and corresponding but she sits and watches the corn grow. When we gave her an audio player to hear Bible stories and songs, in her native tongue, it was a true beauty of bringing 21st century technology to the Mozambican bush. No such thing has ever cross her path. What a blessing to know her.
Our other patient is text book. Unfortunately I would have thought her to be text book of the early 1990's but living about 4 miles from my front door she's a reflection of AIDS stigma. Mother of 2 with tuberculosis and HIV she feels abandoned by all those that she called friend. Her family is afraid to touch her or to help her bath for fear of getting "the disease." Next week we'll call together her friends to show them that we sit on the same mat as their friend, we hold her hand, we sing with her. We hope to teach them that you can maintain a friendship EVEN after someone finds out they are HIV positive. For her, we do our best to keep her comfortable, we shower her with our love, we pray for her TB to respond to treatment and for her ARVs to have the Lazarus effect. And again we cry out, "Lord have mercy!"
And by the end of that week, I'm tired. But even so, I'm well because I believe so strongly in what we're doing. I'm ready to rest with my family and enjoy all that the Lord has given me in the last several years-- a beautiful daughter, an equally amazing husband, and now, the opportunity to do work I'm passionate about! And tonight I say, "Lord, thank you for your mercy!"
Living Waters Palliative care because we hope to be: "as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” John 7:38
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