A Big Thank You !

Dr. Earl and Rosemary Parrish just finished 6 weeks volunteering at St. Martin De Porres.

Dr. Parrish is a plastic surgeon and Rosemary is a nurse. They both worked together many long hours, both in Njinikom and at Mbingo. So many patients were able to have surgeries that were life changing; surgeries that would be impossible in this part of the world without their presence.

So a Big Thank You Earl and Rosemary from all of us at Njinikom and Mbingo!

There has not been a case of Ebola in Cameroon.

We are becoming concerned though, as the outbreak in West Africa has come to Nigeria and a separate outbreak is occurring in the Congo.

St. Martin De Porres Hospital has patients daily from Nigeria and our "Big" cities Yaounde and Douala.

We have have been preparing for the possibility of Ebola with talks and protocols but praying that it doesn't arrive and for those being affected.

We are at the high point of the rainy season. 
The roads have gotten so bad that we are unable to go to our outreach clinics in our trucks.

We are now sending a nurse, by motorcycle, to see patients.

This is a video of one of our outreach trips.

Thank you Dr. Garlitos

Dr. Garlitos, is an internal medicine doctor from Southern California.  He has come to Njinikom through Mission Doctors Association.

He has been with us for the last month and has been working on the Male and Tuberculous wards.

He has also helped in the out patient department and with our therapeutic committee which overseas our HIV patient population.

We have really appreciated all of his help and look forward to his next visit!

Our outreach at St. Martin De Porres includes 6 different clinics.

The clinics are 30 minutes to 3 hours traveling time from Njinikom.

One of the most challenging aspects, for these clinics, is their isolation and lack of transport.  This is especially true in the raining season when only motorcycles can get through.

All of these clinics deliver babies but cannot do a cesarean or transfuse blood.  You can imagine how challenging this would be for a patient with obstructed labor or postpartum hemorrhage at 2:00 AM on the back of a motorcycle!

We have been able to take our portable US to these clinics. Some of these clinics have no electricity which makes having the portable US with batteries especially nice.

We have identified a number of high risk pregnancies and these patients will deliver at St. Martin De Porres. Hopefully our out reach visits will decrease the number of transfers at 2:00 AM!

Father's Day

Reflecting on Father’s day invariably brings memories of my own father.

He is always there to be a support when needed, provide advice when asked and lives each day as a model of a man I am striving to be.

In our house when I was growing up, I remember a small plaque, hung on wall, not in a very prominent place but a very prominent place in my mind’s eye with the saying:

                        “The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”

As a physician, may times I am able to see a family at the worst and best of times, seeing the strength of a father in the passing of a loved one and his joy in the birth of a child.  I have truly been blessed to be a witness to these events.

I have stumbled many times in trying to become the father to my children that my father has been to me, but another saying which rings so true for me is…. “It is not the number of times that I fall but the number of times I get up.” With each fall, I feel the helping hand of my father and those that came before me helping me to get up to strive to be the father I hope to be.

Thank you Dad and thanks to all the fathers who have shown me the love of our Heavenly Father touch their families in so many profound ways.

Sister Hilda

Sister Hilda came to Njinikom, from Italy, in 1957 at the age of 27 years old.

She cares for the 65 plus cattle that provide milk for the orphanage and meat to sell to help support the sisters.

A few weeks ago Sister took us to a cave, the hike was challenging enough for the kids and daddy but Sister Hilda, at 84 years old, did not seem to have a problem.

She told us many stories from the past. One of her stories was how she would go up and down the mountain, to the other side of the river, 5 times in a day to retrieve “Elephant Grass” which is/was used to provide the roofs to the buildings. On her return trips, up the mountain, she would rest in the cave as it was much cooler and provided a nice rest before continuing up the mountain to Njinikom.

Jen and I are spending one morning a week in Nicholas's class, helping the teacher. 

There are only 82 kids!

Today, I helped test the kids on religion. This is a child who is reciting a few of the 10 commandments.

Sister Xaveria

Sister Xaveria recently left her position as Matron at St. Martin De Porres Catholic Hospital and will now be overseeing the Tertiary Sisters of St. Francis’ hospitals and health centers in Cameroon.

She spent 14 years as the Matron at St. Martin De Porres. During this time there was considerable growth including new surgical and obstetric wards, new theatre, chapel, and many other structures that have become part of the hospital.

She also created a place of caring and love, not only among the workers, but especially for the patients who come here.

We have been honored and blessed to know Sr. Xaveria and we know that her new position will bless many more.

Thank You Sister Xaveria!

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……

New Ultrasound

We recently received a new ultrasound machine.  This was obtained by a donation from Mission Doctors Association.

It is a portable US so it allows us to take it to the wards, outpatient, maternity and recently to one of our outreach clinics.

It really helps to direct our care of patients!

The photo is of Dr. Dabo our Obstetrician/Gynecologist with the new portable US.

 

Come to me all you who labor and I will give you rest.

Minette was a little girl who came in with difficulty breathing and swelling of her legs. She had so much difficulty breathing that she had to sleep sitting almost upright and her breathing was extremely labored for several days. Every time I saw her I thought, “How long will she be able to breathe like this?” I felt that at any moment her breathing could just give out. She had malaria that caused severe anemia which in turn caused heart failure. We treated her with blood transfusions, oxygen, and medicine to help her heart and finally after about 4 days she improved. I knew she was better the day I came in and she was lying down to rest. “Come to me all you who labor and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

Thanksgiving

We had a very nice Thanksgiving celebration with an American premed student who has been volunteering at the hospital for the last several months and with 2 Belgian midwifery students who were doing a practical rotation here. We did not have turkey, although we have seen some turkeys around, however chicken was a fine substitute. We had stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce, Magic Cookie bars and even pumpkin pie. Thank you to Terry and Jim, the volunteers here before us, who had left some things like butterscotch chips, flaked coconut, and canned pumpkin which came in handy. We ate until we were all stuffed!

God is Great

Precious is a 2 year old patient who came in with vomiting and diarrhea. After a couple days, her abdomen became acute and she was taken to the operating room and found to have intussusception. This is a condition where one part of the intestine slides into another part of the intestine causing a bowel obstruction. After the surgery, she was very ill with a persistently distended belly, total body edema, and electrolyte abnormalities. She had a fast heart rate, fast breathing, fever, and pain.

I would check on her several times a day and see her mother’s usually smiling and confident face. Only once did I see her mother become tearful. Then on Sunday night, the electricity went out and she had no oxygen overnight. I thought for sure she would die that night. I would wake up in the night thinking that she must have slipped away and that the Surgical Ward just hadn’t called me to let me know. I finished my call week and turned the case over to Brent on Monday. I was spent worrying about her and just could not face her mother again to tell her that we were trying, but that her condition was not good.

She lost her IV on Monday and they could not replace it because of her body swelling. Maybe that was a good thing, because when she began to drink, she was able to self-regulate. I could not bring myself to see Precious and her mother again until Thursday, when I heard she had turned the corner.

Today, about 2 weeks later, Precious was sitting outside picking the leaves off of the huckleberry stems to make Njamma-jamma, the local greens eaten everyday with fufu. She won’t let me touch her, but she did let me take her picture. I said to her mother, “God is good” and she said back to me, “God is great.” And isn’t that the truth.

Video from Feast of St. Martin De Porres

We wanted to share a video from the Feast of St. Martin De Porres celebration at St. Martin De Porres Hospital in Njinikom, Cameroon.

Conversations

Last Sunday as we were waiting outside the church for the 6:30 am Mass to finish before we went in for the 8:30 Mass. A brother (14 yo) and sister (12 yo) came up to Jennifer to talk. Both are HIV positive, presumably from birth, as their Mom is as well. They were reporting to her that their CD4 levels (the cells in their blood that fight off infections in the body) had increased and that they were taking their medications faithfully.

It was such a profound moment for me. These young children face such a difficult life to begin with and now, with their HIV as a lifelong chronic disease, their day to day routine is so different from the cares I had as a child.

St. Martin De Porres Feast Day

St. Martin de Porres Catholic General Hospital was named after St. Martin de Porres. The Feast Day of St. Martin De Porres was celebrated with a special Mass at the hospital attended by the staff and patients.

Martin de Porres, O.P. (December 9, 1579 – November 3, 1639), was a lay brother of the Dominican Order who was beatified in 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI and canonized in 1962 by Pope John XXIII. He is the patron saint of mixed-race people and all those seeking interracial harmony. Juan Martin de Porres was born in Peru of Spanish and African or possibly part Native American descent. He was noted for work on behalf of the poor, establishing an orphanage and a children's hospital.

This picture is in front of the sign commemorating the 50^th Anniversary of the hospital (1963 – 2013) which was celebrated earlier this year. Often, for special occasions, fabric is created as part of the commemoration. Sr. Xaveria generously had these special outfits made for us out of the 50 ^th Anniversary fabric. Elizabeth even designed her own dress! The words on the fabric are Faith, Discipline, and Selflessness, with the name of the hospital surrounding the picture of St. Martin de Porres.

A Few Luxuries

Mount Boyo

Although our food options are more limited here, we do have a couple luxuries here that we didn’t have in Guatemala. Our water source comes from a spring on Mount Boyo and is clean and drinkable directly from the tap. This means that we don’t have to purify water, we can brush our teeth with the water in the sink, we can just wash fruits and vegetables and do not have to soak then in iodine or bleach water to eat them raw, and dishes, cups, and eating utensils do not have to be completely dry before using them. We also have hot water in every tap, including the kitchen, not just in the shower. We used to boil water to wash dishes, but we don’t need to anymore. There is also satellite TV in the house. Although most of the channels are in French or Arabic, we can get international news at times.

Bell

The children’s day begins, at school, with the ringing of the bell and ends the same.

What happens between these two times changes day to day.

What we learn, who we meet, how we see God working throughout our lives day to day.

We cannot change when the bell rings but we can see how God is calling us to be.... between those two rings.