Collaboration with Mbingo Baptist Hospital

Drs. Chuck and Angela, from Mbingo Baptist Hospital which is about 30 minutes down the road from Njinikom, recently visited St. Martin de Porres and provided an excellent Saturday continuing medical education talk.

Dr. Chuck is an internal medicine doctor and his wife, Angela, is a pediatrician. They have been in Mbingo for the past two and half years.  Their on the ground experience has been invaluable to us and they have shared many medical pearls. They know first hand the challenges of working in a resource limited area.

We have been fortunate to get to know them and have been very fortunate to have had their expertise for some tough cases.

A happy follow up the other day…….

Adamou is a 9 year old boy who came to the hospital for the first time in January.  We were asked to see him urgently.  I was told he was referred from a clinic with the history of an undescended testicle. Upon arriving to see him, he was unconscious with rapid respirations.  He was subsequently found to be in diabetic ketoacidosis and had a fractured femur!

The history was that two weeks prior to his arrival to St. Martin De Porres he had been kicked by a cow and the family had tried various “traditional” treatments at home. He had not been able to walk since that time and the last few days before coming to the hospital he had become less responsive.
He was started on insulin and IV fluids and the orthopedic surgeon was consulted. He improved over the next week and was discharged. On follow up he was doing much better and the family was doing well providing insulin at home.

Youth Day

Cameroon celebrated Youth Day on February 11th.

For the past month, the children practiced and then competed among the schools in our area to see which schools would dance and sing for the Youth Day celebration. Our children’s school, St. Anthony, won first place in the traditional dance and the special youth day song and dance.  St. Anthony’s has been very inclusive, asking Christopher, Elizabeth, and Julianne to participate in everything. Despite their lack of natural rhythm, the kids learned the songs and dances well and really enjoyed themselves. If you look closely at the video, you may be able to spot them.  Surprisingly, it was the best 8 hours we’ve spent in the hot sun in a long time!

(Click on the video to view some of the performance)

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is always a somber and yet reassuring time for me.  At one level it is a reminder of where I (Brent) came from and where I will go in this world (ashes to ashes) and at another level from God and to God I will go.

It helps to remember the latter especially when it seems that a patient is taken too early from this world……