taking a deep breath

For those wondering, in spite of a few moments during which I was decidedly not of good courage, and several more moments of medical uncertainty, by God's grace I did survive my encounter with HIV clinic yesterday. My efficiency was... lacking, though, and I was grateful to have Rop, a C.O., around to see some of the backlog that my inexperience simply wasn't going to allow me to make it through before closing time. Many things amaze me here: how much there can be to do, the fact that it's completely acceptable for me to leave abruptly and without explanation in the middle of an outpatient visit to assess a sick child in casualty... as I was trying to plow through a sheaf of unfinished charts yesterday around 4:45, I received yet another call: "Doctor Carolyn, please come to ICU!" Hearing the urgency in the nurse's voice, I ran from MCH as quickly as my long skirt would allow me, knowing exactly what must be happening to the child I had admitted there only an hour before. Three rounds of epi later, we had to admit that there was nothing further we could do for the child, and I was left only with the task of finding the mother, sitting with a chaplain outside the ICU, and telling her of the death of her baby.

I've begun to realize (again) that it's a pretty good day here when all of your patients survive until the end of it. But there are limits, often frustrating limits, to what we can do for the physical body, so it's a good thing that we still have a message of hope, even for a person without a chance for medical recovery.

Today was relatively run-of-the-mill, insofar as one can actually say that here. And so I took a few hours to relax and read this evening. I'm making my way right now through Miracle at Tenwek, the story of Ernie Steury, Tenwek's first physician, and I have such admiration for what he (and his family) perservered through during their many years here... he was one doctor, on call every day, serving 300,000 people, for so long. It gives me courage when I'm feeling tired and/or facing a weekend on call (like this one!) to know that I serve a God that can sustain us through even so much as that.

On a decidedly more cheerful note, I took this picture in nursery today... what, Kiptoo, you don't like the paparazzi?