May 14, 2006
Wow, it has been a long time since we have sent out any Shanksteps. In our last note, Greg mentioned that we were praying for patients to come to the hospital.
Although I don¡¦t believe that God created a meningitis epidemic, HE did use it to bring up our census. We started receiving kids with meningitis around the end of February, and about 2 weeks ago it finally let up. I think that during med school and residency I saw 2 patients with meningitis, and did 2 or 3 spinal taps. Now¡K I could treat meningitis in my sleep ¡V which is a good thing because we were getting called every night, often several times a night to admit these kids. The hospital census increased from 25 patients to 55-60 for about 2 months. We turned the pediatrics ward into a meningitis ward, and moved the rest of the kids into a different ward. I think in all we treated over 100 cases of meningitis here. But I know for every person with meningitis we saw here, there were 2 or 3 in the villages that probably didn¡¦t survive. We lost 4 patients to the disease, 3 after having been treated with a deadly ¡§over the counter¡¨medication made up of Tylenol and cocaine, or other traditional medications.
We have finally started taking days off as a family.
From the time that Dr Hamza left, we have worked 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and gotten very little sleep during this time. About 4 weeks ago we took our first day off with Mindy (4th year med student from
LLU) and her husband, and travelled for the day to Waza ¡V wild animal park. We left early that Wednesday morning and got to Waza about 7am. We drove around the park until about 1pm then decided to stop and eat lunch. This time of year is the hottest and dryest, so all of the animals head to 1 or 2 watering holes. We were able to see several giraffe, 1 elephant, a huge lizard, a python (thanks to Scott¡¦s good eyes) and VERY fortunately, we saw a lion chasing after a gazelle. It was a beautiful sight. We were all hot and tired and so decided to head to Maroua to drop Mindy and Scott at a hotel in preparation for their trip home (8-10 hrs by bus, 12-20 hrs by train,
12-15 hrs by plane ¡V not an easy trip). Greg and I returned home to relieve our nurse from on call duty.
The following week we had unexpected guests. James Appel and Sarah came to stay with us for a week while the political unrest, and potential problems calmed down in Chad. After Chad¡¦s presidential elections on May 3rd they were able to return home. We thoroughly enjoyed spending that time with our friends and fellow missionaries. We swapped stories, played games, did rounds together. They even gave us 2 days off. Our first day off we spent on ¡§vacation¡¨ at a hotel in Maroua, where we spent the day swimming in the pool and reading in an air conditioned room. We ate pizza and drank soda. It was pure gluttony. The AC was an added bonus, as we had just gone 4 days without electricity and water at home, which also meant no fans¡KOn Sunday, our busiest day, James and Sarah offered to man the hosptial so we could work on unpacking boxes that had come in the container. It was a true blessing, and we were able to get a bunch done. We definitely brought too many personal things, but it¡¦s like Christmas every day we open another box. We had no electricity the whole week that James and Sarah were here (I guess preparing them for returning to Chadƒº) so we all slept outside under the stars. It was much cooler, but I expect the malaria epidemic to hit our house any day now.
We are now back to a normal schedule. The hospital was full before James got here, the census decreased to 9 patients while he was here (3 docs in the hospital and only 9 patients), and now the census has picked back up a bit, so we have been a little more busy. We are now in the home stretch looking forward to coming home. We have 36 days before we leave here and are very excited about seeing family and friends and our pets, and eating good food.
We thank all of you for your prayers, gifts, donations, ideas, thoughts, notes etc. God has really taken care of us.
We have one specific prayer request we would like to make known. We are desperately in need of a western trained nurse to come out here and train our nurses.
If our nurses can have actual training, our jobs will be much easier, and the patient care will improve considerably. Because this is such a male dominated culture, we are praying for a male nurse, or nurse practitioner, with some years of experience, lots of energy, leadership skills, ability to speak French (or learn quickly), and great heart for the Lord.
Although all of our employees are Adventist in name, most have a very weak spirituality or even understanding of a relationship with God. Please keep this request in your prayers. God has already done amazing things here and I believe that he has big plans for this hospital.
Thank you for your love and prayers,
In His Hands,
Audrey and Family