Praises and prayer requests

To our friends and family: Thank you for your prayers!

We wanted to post a quick blog to let you know of some praises this week. Tim has had the opportunity to share Christ with 3 different people in the hospital over the past week. He will usually talk to them with the chaplain for language and cultural reasons. Two of the patients decided to accept Christ, and the third is contemplating it. It seemed as if the two who accepted Christ had never even heard of Jesus before.

Praise the Lord for His faithfulness in continuing to bring lost souls into His Kingdom from every tribe (each of the patients above spoke a different heart language). Please pray for the man who is contemplating following Christ. 

Lastly, an update from last post: the extremely low birth weight baby that I mentioned in the last post is still hanging on and going strong. She was born at 0.8kg, dropped to 0.5kg, and is now back up to a little above birth weight after almost 6 weeks. It also seems as if her family is starting to take a little more of an interest in her lately. Please continue to pray for her growth and protection from infection as well as for her family's hearts to continue to warm up to her and desire to take care of her.

The Last 36 Hours

The last 36 hours have been quite busy at the hospital (a little more than usual). It was probably a combination of people waiting until after the New Year to come into the hospital and being short staffed (only 2 long-term general doctors-including myself, one general surgeon, one temporary doctor, and 2-3 students). Patients are lying on the floor (due to overflow) in Male, Female, and Maternity Wards.

I was on-call for the hospital starting yesterday morning. In the subsequent 36 hours, I have performed the following (to all the non-medical folk, sorry for the medical jargon!):
- 7 Cesarean sections (placental abruption with Hct of 14% with IUFD at ~30wks- she had a Couvelaire uterus, woman with two previous C-sections in labor, fetal distress, failed induction for woman with severe preeclampsia, and arrest of dilation for the others)
- 1 Manual rotation of a baby from occiput posterior to occiput anterior with successful delivery of healthy baby soon afterwards
- 1 Incision and drainage for large forearm abscess
- 1 D&C for retained placenta fragments after delivery of a non-viable 15 week baby
- 1 Debridement for Fourniere's gangrene (necrotizing fasciitis of the private area)
- 1 Splinting of a lateral humeral epicondyle fracture
- 1 Suturing of knife stab wound to the upper arm

Other cases seen on the ward in the last 36 hours:
- DKA in young boy with Type 1 diabetes
- Status epilepticus in woman with presumed meningitis
- Extremely low birth weight (~0.6kg) neonate born to mother with HIV
- Two cases of necrotizing fasciitis of a leg (from knee to foot)
- Two cases of Ludwig's angina (bad jaw infection from abscessed tooth)- one in a pregnant woman who began having preterm contractions- now stopped
- One case of tib/fib fracture who did local treatment for two weeks before coming to hospital for wound care. Now in long leg cast with windows in the cast for wound care.
- Polycythemia in a neonate born at ~37 wks via normal delivery a copy days ago to a mother who delivered monochorionic monoamniotic twins - both babies now doing well despite their umbilical cords being twisted in a knot before delivery (mother was referred in to our facility because of labor and loss of fluid)
- Bowel obstruction in older gentleman
- Enlarged right atrium and right ventricle in adolescent boy with hypoxia and elbow abscess

Hope you enjoyed the snapshot of a not-so atypical day here at BMC.
God is good :)