MeeNaPa

Today is Thursday November 14 at one o’clock in the afternoon.  A lady from WahSueTah (WST), enters the clinic and asks me to please come to her house and check her husband, MeeNaPa, age 42.  He has been vomiting and had diarrhea since yesterday.  I tell her that as soon as I finish with the patients who are here right now, I will come.It is always so difficult to know what to bring.  I put every kind of medicine that I think I might need for diarrhea in my bag along with injections for vomiting or charcoal if he can hold anything down.  I think and pray.  Now I must walk alone to WST a mile away because BletJaw must stay and help the electrician.  I do not mind because it is a lovely day.Once again I am shocked at the sight of the sick man lying on a mat.  At first glance I can tell he is an opium addict, dehydrated, low BP and must have had blood come from the nose at one point.  Now I am told that the diarrhea and vomiting have been blood, along with the epistaxis!  I am not looking forward to what his BP might be!  Sure enough, what I was afraid of – 78/38!  Nothing that I brought was good enough for this man.  He must go to MeDooGlow (MDG), and that right quickly.  It is so surprising to me that when someone's life is in danger, nobody else feels the urgency of the situation.  Nobody is worried.  They don't seem to have a clue of how serious it is.  I guess they think I will fix it or that it is not life threatening – or else they don’t think at all.  I don’t know;  all I do know is that before this man goes into shock, I must get his legs up and run the mile home, get IV supplies, get the truck and take him to MDG. The wife does not want to go to the hospital, but I insist.  I tell her to bring her blanket and clothes because her husband will have to go from MDG, on to Omkoi.BletJaw really must stay with the electrician, even though he would love to drive for us.  I drive to WST alone.  This was very difficult for me because there is a new bridge into that village, which is nice to walk on, but it is very narrow and in a truck you must turn hard against a bank and try to maneuver onto that bridge straight enough so you don’t scrap the sides.  The onlookers tried to direct me, but they did not know how.  I reversed - forward, reversed- forward, many times before it seemed straight enough to enter.  I NEVER want to have to do that again!!  When I reached the end of that pathway where the truck would not fit, I had to turn around.  It was rugged and steep with deep pits and mounds everywhere.  God helped me somehow get pointed in the opposite direction.Now lightning and thunder are all around.  A light rain began to fall.  What suddenly happened to the lovely day? This is really unusual here during the month of November, but sure enough, the rain must be heavy toward to south.  I pray for dry roads.  I really have had enough of mud and sliding.  Now I see the poor wife coming down the steep slippery pathway carrying her husband on her back!  She had to come a long way from her house way uphill behind WST.  She plunked him down beside the truck on a steep bank of rocks.  No way to raise his legs in this location, but there is no other place to put him.  I must start his IV right here, because if I miss the first one and have to go to the other arm it would be next to impossible to do in the truck.  I squat beside the man and look at his arms.  Not only is his pressure bottomed out, but what thin little veins he has are knotted with needle tracks where he has repeatedly mainlined heroin. The veins are mostly rock hard.The next thing that happened cannot really be described in words.  You need a video.  Even though the man’s condition is life threatening, what happened next is hilarious.  I laughed right out loud as I was driving to MDG just thinking about it. I was trying to get an 18 gauge cathalon into MeeNaPa’s right arm, when my balance on the rocks went out.  The rocks rolled away from underneath me and I went headfirst backwards down the hill!  It was the most ungraceful move to say the least!  Finally I came to a stop and attempted to pull myself up, but the rocks kept slipping. Needless to say that IV was unsuccessful. Somebody pushed me back up to position.The poor man noticed the small abrasion that I got on my left knuckle and showed concern over it.  My whole heart went out to this dear man who could be thinking about me when he himself was so desperately sick.I prayed earnestly as I prepared to start his IV in the left arm because I had brought only 2 cathalons with me and this was the last one!  Praise the Lord, that needle pushed its way right through the rocky vein, stretching it open, and the life saving solution poured in.I have not traveled the road this way into MDG for 4 months.  I am wishing I had another 4 months without it too, because it is muddy, caved in and steep! The threat of a heavy rain storm was always surrounding us.  I prayed earnestly that God would once again hold off the rain until I made it safely home again.  The God we serve is a great God.  He heard my prayer and held off the rain!  Oh thank you dear Lord!I stopped and hung another IV bag halfway to MDG.In one section of this road, they are in the process of laying cement, which is wonderful, but they have two make shift detours through the jungle that are quite long.  Really you feel like you are just pushing narrowly through the dense jungle.  Now we meet a truck head on.  One of us has to back out.  This time he backed out and got stuck!  Next one, I had to back out. Thanks to my guardian angel I did not get stuck.  This is tiring business, but in 2 hours and 15 minutes, we finally made it to MDGMeeNaPa’s pressure had gone up to 96/48, thanks to the fluids!  He is a very sick man, and all because of opium.  They are preparing to take him to Omkoi.This man is hanging between life and death.  So much is at stake for him!  Oh I pray that God will save his life in this world, so that he can have a chance to be saved for eternal life with Jesus.