Crazy Fun!!!!

Well I am back from Haiti and exhausted.... so exhausted. I was back in Illinois a mere 12 hours before going back to work. I feel like I have been run over by a truck. The alarm this morning was not my friend. I have a very short turn around before heading back to the ship (7 days to be exact) and way to much on the to do list but as always I know it will get done. Despite the sadness and the craziness of this last week it was all worth it, and there was a big highlight in my memory and I would love to share some pictures and the story.

Monday morning we started our day in the supply room getting prepared for the day. Stocking up on what we might need in our toolbelts (we literally wore home depot tool belts to carry supplies with us, they were very useful and very fashionable) and having a prayer with the nurses to start the day off right. On the way out I spotted a doppler (for finding fetal heart rates or for finding pulses ect), as I saw it I said hey we have a doppler we should have a baby this week. Marlene was a sport and said ok I'll pray for one.

During afternoon rounds Marlene comes running up to me saying boy did you get your wish. A laboring women had been carried in by 5 men on a wooden door and placed down on the floor in the middle of the ward. Pat (one of my team members) spent years as a L&D nurse and I were in our glory so. She was actively laboring already 7 cm and having her second baby.

We put her in a room and scrambled for supplies. It was turning into evening and there was no light in the room so to a new room we went.

So here we were 2 labor nurses and a orthopedic surgury resident ready to catch.

I was a little nervous, I had to scramble in my mind to function without all my modern day tools. There was no continuous monitoring, no oxygen, no suction, no baby warmer. The babies heart rate was good from what we could tell with that doppler (thanks to new batteries and a quick clean up by Heather, it worked like a charm). The big thing that made me nervous was that the amniotic fluid was thick meconium stained (baby had first bowel movement while inside leaving the fluid stained and putting the baby at a higher risk of taking some of this fluid into it's lungs causing breathing problems at birth). At home we would have nursery nurses present and suction ready for the moment the baby was born. Here we had none. (but we did have prayer and I'd take that over suction any day)

She progressed fairly quickly and delivered a beautiful baby girl about 2 hours after she arrived at 7:18 pm (I had predicted 7:17 not to brag or anything ;) The baby did great needed a little encouragement to start but perked right up. We used the mom's skin and blankets she had brought for warmth and everything went great!!!!!!!!! So crazy fun. She named her Valentina so appropriate for our Valentine's Day baby.

This was such a reaffirming event. I have my interview for midwifery school in less than a week and I know that this is exactly what I want to do.

To see the rest of my photos from my week in Haiti check out my facebook album

Lord, today I am thankful for 2 feet

I sit here at the end of an absolutely amazing absolutely exhausting week. I am sitting in what we lovingly refer to as the "internet cafe" which really is a wooden bench in the back of a beat up clinic/emergency room (the only place around with internet access even though it is sloooowwww you won't hear me complaining). It is the end of day 6. Six crazy days of working nonstop. I smell of sweat, bug spray, and hand sanitizer.

I got the opportunity to spend this last week at a hospital in the mountains of Haiti about 90 miles outside of Port au Prince at the Hospital of Light in Bonne Fin. This place was set to close February 1 due to a number of different circumstances and then the quake hit. With so many thousands displaced out into the country side there was an instantaneous need for this place in a big way. Since the quake it has been full of patients in desperate need of medical care and it has been staffed with it's previous staff supplemented by outside teams like mine coming in with supplies and man power weekly in order to keep the doors open and the patients cared for.

Every one of these patients have a story. There was a lady who cut her own trapped arm off with a piece of concrete and dug her way out using her cell phone. There is a boy who was the only one in his classroom of over 60 to survive, the stories go on and on. They break my heart, but beyond the grief and tragedy is a spark of hope that never seems to have quite extinguished.

Ralph a 20 year old boy who has a left above the knee amputation and is always cracking a joke was playing a little game with me, he would say "hey can you do this" as he crinkles his face in a certain way then I would say hey can you do this as I show him my double jointed thumb, after a few rounds he pulled out the big guns and says hey bet you can't do this as he takes his stump and swings it out to the side, your leg is way to long for that he says and we both laugh. How he has managed to find humor so quickly after tragedy speaks so truly to the resilience of the human spirit.

Another boy has gotten the nickname of wheely boy because he (also a leg amputation patient) is constantly wheeling around in his chair running over everyone else. Today I came out of the OR around the corner and saw him confidently coming down the walk on his crutches. It put the biggest smile on my face, now he is walking boy. I smiled at him told him how awesome he was doing gave him a little fist pound and then as I walked away was terribly aware of both of my feet.

This week I saw my first amputation in the operating room (my experiences in there is a whole other entry). Now while this was very clinically interesting, I couldn't help but put myself in their shoes, what if this tragedy was me and tomorrow I was a limb short. How do you process a life change like that. I guess there is no answer but when these things occur you just wake up every morning and face the day ahead because His grace is sufficient and His mercies renew every morning.

For pictures from my week in Bonne Fin, Haiti check out my facebook album here

Hi Ho Hi Ho its off to Haiti I go.....

Just when I think I have my head around all that is going on in my life, I get something new. This new thing I am very excited about. After the earthquake in Haiti I had put my name in with the world relief group at church saying I would be available if they needed nurses for medical teams. I got an email late Monday night and I am leaving early Friday morning. I am going for 1 week with a group of 6 on a medical team to work at one of the missionary hospitals in the mountains I believe a ways away from the city. They are still getting lots of patients traveling out from the city for care as they still have buildings and electricity.

I love watching God work and it all fall together even though I am feeling like I am scrambling. I got the email about 9pm on Monday and within 30 minutes had all my shifts at the hospital covered to free me up for the week to go. Then this morning I made a couple of phone calls asking for donations of medical supplies and now I have more than I will be able to carry with me. My original flight got cancelled but we were able to cancell and rebook one for cheaper! I was nervous about flying alone and with the rebooking of flights am now going to the airport with another memeber of the team. I am looking forward to a challenging and exciting week.

So please be prayerful for my team as we travel and serve in the coming week.

Thanks

To live a life

Lately I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have a life. Not the the I am breathing and my heart is beating life (although this is very important to the whole living thing). The "wow you've got a great life" or the "I wouldn't want the kind of life." Who gets to say what is an accomplished life and what isn't or what makes a happy life and what doesn't or even yet what you have to have in your life or have done in your life in order to be in the right stage of life for your age.

I am 23 and 5/6ths and I guess this is the age where people think you may be starting to expire as far as the meeting the right guy, falling in love, and settling down thing goes. I have had more people ask me in the last 2 months when I am going to settle down, why I am not dating, and telling me they know the perfect guy for me. Maybe I am starting to wilt or something but I sure don't feel like I am starting to expire. I feel young and totally fulfilled and have my whole life ahead of me and am absolutely loving the life I am living, which is an amazing blessing I owe God absolutely all the credit for.

I guess I am saying I just don't know why we can't work at being a little more content in the exact place we are instead of always living in the if onlys. I am constantly doing this living for the next thing instead of living for the right here and now. If we are seeking God and living for Him then we are exactly where He has us and that has to be ok. Even if it is the opposite of where we think it should be or where we would choose to be.

I also have been challenged by something lately. I have gotten this exciting few year where I am getting to live my dream but what if it all ends tomorrow or a year from now and I settle in to a life more behind the scenes will I be just as content then. I was reading the Feb 5 entry in My Utmost for His Highest and was challenged by that thought.

"Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket - to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister? Some saints cannot do menial work and remain saints because it is beneath their dignity."

Here I am more than willing to go and do and be a visible part of the work God is doing but I think it may just be a bigger and possibly more difficult calling for those who serve those who serve and stay faithful and diligent unto that work. The question is am I also willing to be that person. Sometimes its easy to serve when you see results in front of your face but that doesn't require all that much faith. The real trick is to stay faithful in the other circumstances where the results aren't quite so obvious. Tonight this is the prayer on my heart,

"....I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4: 11b - 13, NIV