Good? Or a Letdown?

In my American mindset, I just couldn’t accept that it was too late. A friend of mine from Congo had traveled to Kenya for an interview for a surgical residency program, but in doing so, he was giving up his spot in Kinshasa to take an English exam required for those desiring to study in the US. Rather than losing his registration fee, I had made the suggestion, before he planned the trip, to change his exam site to Kenya. It would be a fee, but not nearly as much as the registration. We both looked on the website and I made calls to Nairobi. We made plans for him to have transportation to Nairobi on the day of the test. As soon as he arrived in Kenya, he got a SIM card and called to make the arrangements, and he had money sent so that he could pay the change fee. This all took several walks to the local shops, and he didn’t have sufficient time to actually make the payment. On his second day in Kenya, as soon as he had a chance after his duties at the hospital, he called to arrange payment. And they said the last day to pay was the prior day. He would no longer be able to take this exam for which he had studied for months. He would forfeit his registration fee. All because he didn’t understand a phrase in English that detailed the deadlines. And I was angry. I felt responsible for not rechecking. I felt responsible for recommending the interview in Kenya in the first place. I was angry.

It was also spiritual emphasis week at Rift Valley Academy. That night, as we worshiped the Lord, the words of the song stung and did not ring true.

Let the King of my heart be the mountain where I run

the fountain I drink from

Oh, He is my song

You are good, good, ohhhhh

You are good, good, ohhhhh

You’re never gonna let, never gonna let me down

You’re never gonna let, never gonna let me down

Ebenezer: "stone of help"

In fact, as the worship leader said to sing it out if we believed it, I stayed silent. I even felt tears welling in my eyes. Because even though I believe that is true for me—I’ve had too many Ebeneezer moments that I can reflect on and see why the Lord allowed circumstances and how He redeemed them—but I did not, in the moment, trust that He would never let others down. I reflected back to our experiences in Congo. Sure, God took great care of our family as we chartered a plane away from the difficult situation and started over in Togo. But our teammates who were left, our Congolese colleagues who carried on, and the patients that I wouldn’t be available for…. What did God do for them? Didn’t our leaving signify an event where God let them down? What about all the Congolese who are suffering and starving because of the political climate created by a few that has caused their money to devalue by over 50%, leaving the common people without means to survive? What about them God? What about my friend who, despite spending a significant amount to come interview in Kenya, and despite making a genuine effort to properly register, and despite his amount of studying, despite all that, he wasn’t able to take the test. Wasn’t He letting my friend down? No, I did not trust Him for my friends.

I was challenged the next day, as I talked to my life coach, to think of how this situation may work out in my friend’s favor. I was still angry with God. I could think of very few reasons why THIS plan was better than the ones we had made. The phrases, “God is in control,” and “He works everything out for good to those that love the Lord,” seem trite and, frankly, unfortunate and often not true. As I prayed to the Lord, I told Him so. I told Him I was angry. My friend said, “I prefer to trust God.” But I was still angry for him. It was almost a dare- SHOW ME, GOD, HOW YOU ARE GOOD.

A field near where I walk and talk weekly with a life coach

As I waited for it, thinking God had His work cut out for Himself this time, I was struck by a couple of sentences written in a devotional by Beth Moore on the book of 2nd Timothy.

As I waited fo

“Not one whit of [a life] experience need be good for a merciful God to use it for good.

He can rob the darkness of the gain of your pain and redeem it powerfully in the light.”

Meaning, it’s perfectly acceptable to say that life sucks sometimes. People get the raw end of a deal. We don’t have to call it good. Jesus didn’t come to heal everyone here on earth. Jesus didn’t come to make everything good now. What did he come for? He came to redeem everyone and everything. Redeem! Not that we have to say it’s good. And the second phrase that is comforting to me, in lieu of, “God is in control,” is

“This didn’t surprise God.”

Although it means quite the same, it doesn’t feel the same to me. A God who is controlling painful circumstances feels different than a God who is never surprised, is prepared to redeem it, is comforting us through it until He redeems it, and who has a plan to make all things new.

In this case, God was up to the task to show me how He was good. In less than 2 weeks, I found out that the mere fact that my friend was studying to take that exam helped him significantly in his interview as the residency program is in English. He was accepted (though not in Kenya, he will be in the equivalent surgical program in Niger!) and this means that having a test result is not necessary for him in his current career path. Rather than losing money as I assumed, he actually saved money from not paying the change fee!

I’m not suggesting that we will always see the reason for difficult experiences this side of heaven, but I am comforted that even if not one bit of an experience feels good, I can long for the time when all things will be redeemed. I was reminded again of this fact while serving on MercyShips in Cameroon last month. I was counseling a woman with terminal cancer who had unfortunately been taken from her village from very far away to come and be screened as a fistula patient because she was leaking stool. As I shared with her that we could not help her recover, and that she would have this sickness the rest of her life (who knows how many days or weeks she has left), I mentioned that Jesus did not come to the earth to heal everything now, but He came so that everything can be healed and redeemed for an eternity. Even if we could heal her with surgery, it would only be temporary, but trusting in Jesus brings peace and healing and restoration that lasts forever.

When I struggle with the goodness of God, the thing I cannot refute (at least haven’t been able to thus far), is that God, as a good Father, allowed His own son, who only showed love to others, to suffer. This Good Father allowed His son to experience hate, betrayal, hunger, to be humiliated and beaten, and to die. I haven’t been able to come up with an experience that would be worse for my own child than what a good Father allowed His son. And He did that for me, the one who is angry over an exam registration fee. Even the thought of the redemption of all the evil in the world was enough for Jesus to trust His Father. The picturing of our reunion and redemption in heaven was “the joy set before him” when He “endured the cross, despising its shame.” And if a good Father can watch His son suffer and use it for good, that same good Father can certainly watch the unnecessary suffering we see around the world and still be called good. 

When Potato Soup Makes You Cry

Having proper expectations has been said to alleviate much of the difficulty of a transition. Our move to Kenya should not have been any different. I mean, it is not like we haven’t made international flights with young children or packed (most) all of our earthly belongings or said too many goodbyes and hellos. I remember my mom fondly recalling how fun it was to set up her home after she got married, but that excitement has lost some of its luster now that I’ve set up a new home, in a new country, 4 times in the last three years. And I’ve visited Kenya for extended periods of time. So if anyone should have proper expectations, it should be me, right?

 Kijabe and I go way back... to 2005 when I came as an undergrad student at LeTourneau. This May we met up with a professor of mine who attended school at Rift ValleyAcademy and was on the team in 2006

When Ryan came home from one of his first days of teaching and found me teary-eyed, he knew why. I was struggling with loneliness, struggling to remember where to buy milk and how to get more cell phone minutes and who to hire to work in our home. I was juggling new schedules of Ryan as a teacher and coach and my schedule of when the preschool moms got together or neighbors walked for exercise. My head just felt like it was exploding with all the new information it was supposed to keep filed away, all the while my heart was simply longing to be known without explaining our long complicated story. Our evenings which used to be filled with swims in the Kwilu River and dinner with the Rices in Congo, or more recently, filled with laughter during Kendall-Potter game nights in Togo were now empty slates. So as Ryan looked into my eyes, he gently said, “It’s only been a couple of weeks. How long were you giving yourself until you expected to feel settled?” I looked up at him and sheepishly answered, “A week. We’ve done this so many times before.”

An analogy I like to use is that of jumping into a very cold swimming pool. You KNOW what it is going to be like, you’ve done it many times, but it still SHOCKS you and takes your breath away when you first enter the water. That’s how it feels to move to a new country with small children. First in the airport as you realize you don’t have nearly enough hands to push all the luggage carts needed to transport your stuff and to keep your kids from attempting to get a ride on the luggage conveyor belts behind the counters. Second you hold your breath when you board that first flight and know you must convince your two active children to stay in a 10 square foot space for hours. And then there is jet lag. And the initial inability to communicate either due to lack of language acquisition or lack of a SIM card in your cell phone. They are just experiences you EXPECT are going to be hard, but that doesn’t take away the SHOCK of the journey it takes to make it through to the other side.

Sydney learned that drinking chai is a nice twice a day tradition in Kenya

Here in Kenya, we found someone to help with basic household tasks right away. It was a huge blessing. She has over 20 years of experience, can cook really well, and loves the kids. In preparation for my return to work, we also decided to try out someone who could focus on caring for our precious active kids when we can’t be home, taking them to play at the playground instead of being cooped up at the house while someone is cooking or cleaning. This is where the potato soup comes in. A sweet woman agreed to come a couple of days a week to do primarily childcare, but our trial period wasn't going so well. Sydney ran away from her once and resisted her care, which isn’t so surprising. Living in her 5^th country and feeling out of control is a little how I feel sometimes- and Sydney is expressing it by trying to control her very small piece. The nanny had seemed stressed out by the kids instead of enjoying them. To top it off, while the kids were napping during the afternoon, I asked her to prepare a simple potato soup for the evening. Just before she left, potato soup sitting on the stove, she asked me if it was going to get better. Broken, I replied, “They are little sinners just like me. I promise we’ll work on it but I can’t promise it will get better because I don’t know.”

Rift Valley Academy has a lot of space to run... and get lost in!

That night, stressed at the probability we were going to have to try another new person with our kids, stressed that our kids were not behaving and putting that guilt on myself for moving them so much, and stressed that no one would love our kids like their nannies in the past, we started eating the potato soup. And I started crying. It was… really spicy hot. Hence the tears. But the crying continued because the soup was also terrible. It was so thick that we didn’t need a bowl and a spoon but a plate and a fork. Did I mention the soup was really spicy? Little red flecks looked back at me from my bowl. I went over and checked the recipe. Nothing in that recipe was spicy or red. So now I looked at my family who was depending on me for food that night, and I had no plan B. I was failing at staying at home, failing at trying not to stay at home (preparing to go back to work in January), failing at parenting, failing at being a wife.

Before I finish the story, I need to admit something. I dread the question, “So how are you doing?” or “Are you feeling settled yet?” at this point in our journey. Because I want to be honest and foster greater community. Because I know that the person asking usually genuinely cares. But I don’t know what to say. I dread it because I have no idea how to put into words that make sense how I’m doing. It’s been a month now, and I don’t feel settled deep down. Sure, routines are getting established and I spend much less mental energy on simple tasks of daily living. But I am still adjusting to the huge transition of being the primary parent. In nearly 4 years since having Sydney, this is the first time when my primary role is to be a mom and where no one is relying on me as a doctor. It’s hard to say this without guilt pouring in. But any physician who has suddenly stepped away from his/her practice of medicine, any working mom for that matter who has stopped working outside the home, even for a season, has somewhat of an identity crisis initially. I’ve read about it on blogs. I expected it. I knew what was coming. (Picture cold swimming pool again.) But it is still a huge adjustment. I LOVE my kids. I LOVE spending time with them. I am so glad that I get these 6 months to soak up each new word Zack says and each new skill Sydney learns. But I also LOVE medicine and delivering babies and doing surgery and physically working hard and many times saving lives. I MISS talking about medicine in a campus full of teachers. I MISS interacting with patients. I MISS feeling competent.

Who am I? I miss feeling competent.

 Not feeling competent when ALL the milk is anywhere but in a bowl or cup after 5 minutes of my absence.
Mama said there'd be days like this.

I miss feeling competent because, as my primary role during this short season is to be a mom, days that are wrapped up in two tiny people don’t often go according to a plan and don’t often reflect the effort I put forth. Some days I feel awesome and others are train wrecks. It’s the difference between the moment your kids have gotten up from their nap for the third time while the other is still crying himself to sleep, and the glorious moment when he finally falls asleep and your three year old is sitting and “reading” her bible stories. One moment you feel you can’t do this any longer and the next you realize you have time to yourself and can sleep and then you love being a mom again.

Sydney has made a good friend already. Hoping she becomes as dear to the kids as their previous nannies.  

So… the potato soup was the end. And the beginning. A new day came. We asked someone new to come and she has been wonderful so far. Zack has started to sleep through the night and is eating well. Sydney stayed with two sweet families while we went to Malawi and was a “great houseguest” and “so polite” from their words. Encouragement came. In this new season, I need to put into practice what so many working moms turned full time moms have talked about. My kids’ behavior is no more a marker of my worth than the number of surgeries I do or babies I deliver. I need to cling to the fact that I am a child of God. Yes, I’m also a mom, a wife, a doctor, a friend. But the one thing that will not change even with death or disability is that I’m the daughter of a King. Jesus is our rock, unchanging, unfazed in His love for us whether we are helping to save a life or helping wipe another snotty nose.  

I LOVE my kids :)

Air Born

 We were less than halfway into a 10 hour flight when the call was made for medical assistance at the back of the plane. There had already been hints that something was amiss. Chasing around a one year old, I had noticed that they were washing the floor in the back galley and didn’t want children freely coming back for water and snacks. I overheard a flight attendant asking one of the other dads who was also running after his child if he spoke Arabic. So the call for medical personnel did not surprise me. I scooped up my son and walked toward the back. Please, Lord, don’t let this be an old man with a cardiac problem, I thought. Instead, it was a younger-looking woman, sitting in the jump seat that flight attendants use for takeoffs and landings, and though she wore a traditional abaya, I could see on her face that she was in labor. I was so relieved.

Though not our plane, this is identical to the one we flew in. (Photo credit: flyinginireland.com)

You see, an OB/GYN responding to a cardiac emergency could be compared to a Toyota mechanic stopping to fix a VW bug on the side of the road. Sure, we’ve had all the training and theory, but it’s going to take some time for us to remember what the right dose of drug might be needed. In addition, we haven’t likely been keeping up with new recommendations outside of our specialty in an ever-changing field of medicine. So I was relieved. Actually, I was feeling right at home. For those of you who clicked on this blog but don’t know me, I’ve spent the past 3 years overseas, working in limited-resource settings, usually with a translator and definitely without epidurals or many IVs. And for some reason, I’ve had several instances of births in unconventional places. Not one, but two babies were born in my apartment building in France, both requiring my help. At least on the plane, we had plenty of blankets and gloves!!    

Blankets and pillows prepared for delivery. Photo credit: airliners.net

 The flight attendant’s eyes widened as I confirmed that, indeed, her water was broken and her cervix already dilated. After the initial questioning, I thought her baby would be quite premature and I wanted something to help stop her labor. My mind was racing as I scoured the medical kit for their available drugs. However, after further questioning and examination, I felt like she was more likely nearly at term. In that case, I told the flight attendants, we could simply observe her contraction pattern. Her contractions had significantly slowed after her water broke. With nearly 6 hours left, there was a chance she could make it until we landed, especially if her contractions didn’t pick up, but we should be prepared for a delivery in the air.

Our flight path from Lomé to New York (photo credit: cheapoair.com)

Contractions weren’t too frequent, so I suggested we get comfortable. We moved from the back galley makeshift bed of pillows and airline blankets into the back two rows of the airplane. She rested, her dutiful husband recorded contractions, and I spent time with my kids and updated my husband. The flight attendants were able to use that galley for its intended purpose. The only excitement during this time was the frequent trips to the bathroom, which is quite common when a baby’s head in the pelvis is acting like an overweight man next to you in an economy seat. One particular instance, as she was trying to exit the tiny bathroom, her husband and I could not contain our laughter as we watched her snatching the end of her abaya from the clutches of the automatic flushing toilet. Let me tell you: in person it is even funnier than in the movies.. And it sure helps lighten the mood when things are tense and uncertain.

With less than three hours to go, it was becoming painfully obvious, pun intended, that her labor was intensifying. We decided to move back to the galley for more privacy and space to stand and move around. Her husband didn’t leave her side. One or the other of my kids occasionally escaped from my husband to see what I was doing at the back of the plane. My daughter, who has seen a cesarean section from the window of an operating room, gently asked me, “Are you going to break her?” I reassured her that I would not need to, but that the baby would be here soon.

Back labor can be excruciating. From my extensive experience in labors without epidural pain relief, I have found a few tricks to help with pain naturally. Providentially, less than a week prior to our departure from Africa I had learned a new osteopathic technique which can help improve labor specifically when the fetal head is putting pressure on the sacrum. I had been a bit skeptical that I could actually apply this technique with my limited osteopathic experience, but it clearly made her pain more tolerable judging from her body language. And then she turned to me and said, through her husband translating, “Something is coming out.”

Upon examination, indeed, the baby’s head had descended. I turned to the flight attendant and asked how long we had. Thirty minutes was her answer, but then she added that even with an emergency priority landing (meaning we land as soon as we get into the airspace instead of waiting our turn) we would still have a 40 minute taxi before the ambulance could be ready to take her. I looked back at my laboring friend, knowing she would not be able to suppress her urge to push for over an hour. I said, “Well, when you feel like you need to push, go for it.” The flight attendant holding up an extra blanket for increased privacy said in disbelief, “So this is happening. Ok. Well should we ask the pilots to hold the landing?” We had been rapidly descending, and our ears were popping as we laid out extra blankets. I said, “No, we just need to get there as soon as possible. Let’s land!” I said, fearing that any delay could jeopardize a chance at higher level care for her or her baby if it was needed.

She pushed just a few times, holding on to the safety bar used by flight attendants as they work in the galley. I told her husband, “Tell her to trust God that He will help her push this baby out.” And with the next contraction, the head delivered, then the body, and we had a screaming beautiful newborn baby getting wrapped in Ethiopian Airlines blankets. The mama sat down and we quickly put her new baby skin-to-skin to breastfeed, with only a moderate amount of wrangling her battle-scarred abaya to make way for the baby. When the placenta came, we put it in a small trash bag, tied it closed with a string, and wrapped it and the cord up with the baby in fresh airline blankets. It was a lotus birth by default, and it was beautiful.

The flight attendants took everything in stride, but they still had business to do. With just minutes left, they said, “We are assuming she cannot go to her seat for landing. How should we do this?” With her husband on one side and me on the other, we shielded the mama from moving while holding with our free hand onto the same safety bars she had used for delivery. “Ok good.” The flight attendants said as they buckled up in their jump seats. “She can hold the baby. We’ll let you know exactly when we are landing.” With that, this precious new life touched ground for the first time. As we taxied toward a waiting ambulance, the whole crew of flight attendants came back to get pictures with the new family in a joyous celebration. 

My personal photo, edited to protect identity and posted with permission. Notice the food carts behind us.

 Due to the noise generated by the airplane during its descent and the calmness displayed by the mama and the entire Ethiopian Airlines crew, most of the other passengers on the airplane had no idea that a baby had just been born. The paramedics and police and border patrol agents came on and escorted the beautiful family through the plane. The mama went first in a wheelchair, her triumphant abaya looking no worse for the wear. I followed the dad who was carrying the newborn. When he reached the row where my husband and kids sat without me for the last 6 hours, he turned to my daughter and bent down to show her the new baby, just as we had told her a few hours before. Until that moment, there had been little interest in the pile of airline blankets that he was holding, but all eyes turned to the bundle. A flight attendant then pointed to me and said in answer to their questioning eyes, “She just delivered a baby. She’s a hero.” I just pointed to the strong mama who just delivered a baby during crazy changes in pressure and turbulence. For me, it was all in a day’s work. And it certainly was easier than chasing around a one year old for the whole flight.

Photo credit: the proud daddy- taken in the hospital.

Life As Precious

It wasn’t a typo. I’m pondering what makes one life as precious as another, or if there are instances where one life is valued higher than another.

In Africa, or at least in French, there is a term used for pregnancies that come after a period of infertility or recurrent miscarriage. Grossesse precieuse. Translated: precious pregnancy.

At first this drove me nuts. Every life is precious, I would tell our medical students. Every pregnancy is precious. We don’t treat labor and delivery differently just because it was difficult for her to get pregnant. We make calculated evidence-based decisions about when to use different medications and when to intervene with a C section. Risk vs benefit. Medicine as science, right? Or not. Never forget that medicine is also an art. And when someone has waited over 10 years and had a few infertility procedures and their baby is near term, it is so hard to treat their pregnancy the same as a teenage mom without support or the same as a momma with 4 kids already at home. In our human-ness, we cannot overlook the relative precious nature of the former pregnant woman’s baby as we make decisions.

Sydney gets early life lessons. This is a very small (living) precious premie baby
whose head just barely outsizes the suction bulb.

I had a new experience this week.* Ryan mentioned that I’d better be glad most days aren’t so exciting. Routine scheduled surgery for possible ovarian tumor vs normal mass. The general surgeon volunteered to scrub in on the case for an extra pair of hands, which I was grateful for. It was a complicated surgery, and got further complicated when she needed to be intubated because her spinal anesthesia had worn off. One attempt to intubate failed. Oxygen saturation recovered but not completely with a facemask of oxygen. Second attempt to intubate seemed successful at first, but the oxygen saturation just kept going down. The general surgeon broke scrub to assist the anesthetist to listen for breath sounds in the lungs. I waited next to the open abdomen, intestines spilled out but covered at this point with a white laparotomy sponge. And then I saw the flat line of no pulse. “Does she have a pulse?” I must have repeated at least 5 times. There was a search on her thick neck, her wrists, without result. I then broke sterility and tried to find a femoral pulse. Nothing. Start doing chest compressions. Her heart has stopped and she is dying. That tube went into the stomach instead of her lungs, so her heart stopped beating because it couldn’t keep doing the work without oxygen feeding that big muscle.

Photo credit: Rose Finley

Oxygen was being given by a facemask, but that was less than ideal. We still needed an airway. I switched off with the general surgeon who was doing chest compressions so that he could prepare to do a cricothyrotomy- an emergency airway cut directly into the cricoid cartilage (hard part by your voice box). As I was doing the work of circulating blood throughout her body with the chest compressions, I felt oddly calm. Watching the pulse on the monitor match my efforts- speed up when I increased the frequency of compressions, and slow when I fatigued- I pondered life. This woman had cancer. She was not very young. I didn’t feel panicked if we couldn’t resuscitate her. Was her life less precious? If she had young children relying on her, would that make this moment more terrifying? What about hypothetical situations where there is a prisoner or a very old person or someone with a chronic psychological problem and there is a bad outcome? Does that affect my value judgment on life?

Rhetorical questions. Important questions. (Further thoughts on triage and deciding how to use limited resources were brought up in an NPR episode called, “Playing God.” It recounts Hurricane Katrina and various war situation triage situations.  http://www.radiolab.org/story/playing-god/# )

The cric was finished in short order, and oxygen levels rose. Still I was doing the work her heart should have been doing. And then, puff, I was startled back to the present by the monitor suddenly reading a heart rate of 110, faster than my cadence. “Is she back?” I asked almost in disbelief. Sure enough, the surgeon nodded. She has a pulse! We gingerly returned to our operation, having left the sterile field and not knowing if we’d return. We regloved and regowned and washed what we could with betadine. We uncovered her intestines and returned them into her abdomen, closed the remaining open cavities as quickly as possible, and prayed as the blood transfusion was running in that she would not have significant bleeding after this and that she would fully recover.

She seized that night, and I actually winced as I walked by the morgue on the way in the next day, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t see that it had been used overnight to store her body. But she wasn’t in the morgue. She was alive. Her sister said what we were all thinking, “God wasn’t done with her, so He brought her back to us.” She improved very quickly, especially considering her wild operation experience. Her grateful smile was so wide, and she just wanted to walk and eat, even with a tube still in her neck. Over the next few days, she continued to make improvements, her tube was removed, she walked outside in the fresh air and I saw her look up into the sunny sky, so grateful for life. We discharged her less than a week after she nearly died. It isn’t the end of her story, though.

Let’s go to another patient briefly. One who initially presents with her water broken and a very premature baby inside. She does everything we ask of her, making the hospital her home for almost 2 months, undergoing frequent tests to ensure the baby is growing and doing well despite the lack of fluid. And then just two weeks before our ideal timing for delivery, she starts bleeding, needs an emergency C section, and gives birth to a premature infant with a good chance of living. But despite oxygen therapy and intensive care, the baby dies, its lungs underdeveloped for how old the baby is because the amniotic fluid which normally fills the lungs in the womb has been lacking. I went to her bedside the day after, and I put my head next to hers and we just cried. Why? Why didn’t she just deliver 2 months ago and mourn and move on? Instead, there was hope and waiting, then emergency surgery and intensive care and death. Is life as precious when a lot of effort has been put forth to avoid a death as opposed to a sudden death? I suppose if death were the enemy, I would never make sense of this. But death is not the end. During her time with us, she and her family learned a lot more about a historical figure that she has grown up respecting as a prophet, but not known fully—Jesus. She now has heard about Him and what He has done to defeat death, pain, and separation from God. If it took a little life inside of her to introduce her to her Savior, then that life was as precious as heaven itself.

Is life as precious when it is unplanned? Or when that unplanned life risks the life of one (more) precious? A very young teenage girl who was forced to undergo an abortion in her own house came in with sepsis. Pulse racing, blood pressure low, fever raging, and belly very tender, we rushed her to surgery. “Smells like they perforated her bowel,” a visiting surgeon mentioned as we were prepping for surgery. “Or necrotic [dead] uterus,” I mentioned, thinking of advanced cervical cancer patients. When we opened her abdomen, there was no stool, thankfully, but almost half of her uterus had to be removed because it was dead. It had been perforated with the instrument used for abortion, and then infection had set in and was killing the uterus slowly. Thankfully her bowel was all healthy. It had escaped the instrument used for abortion. I’m unsure if she’ll ever be able to have a child safely; only time will tell. But she is alive.

Pic to the left is the uterus- the black part is all dead, the hole near the bottom left where the instrument poked through. The remainder of the uterus is pink and in my hand.


Back to our ovarian cancer patient. She was doing well as an outpatient for a few days, getting daily dressing changes. But she took a turn for the worse, had shortness of breath, started vomiting, and eventually was readmitted for a second surgery to reclose her abdomen as the infection had made our first closure weakened. She came out of the second surgery, still smiling, still grateful for another day of this precious life. And that’s all she was given. She died suddenly less than 24 hours after her second surgery. Again, why? Why did she survive the initial surgery and seemingly do so well? Her family all knows and loves Jesus, and they were praising God for healing her just as we pray before each surgery- because we know that God is the one who heals and who gives us wisdom when we ask. And each person who is healed or baby whose life is saved we pray that their healing will be used to glorify God.

I don’t have the answers. The fact of the matter is that God chooses to heal, sometimes miraculously, sometimes despite us, sometimes directly because of our actions. Sometimes God allows life to be extended, and sometimes God allows life to slip away. I don’t have answers, but I do know that God watched His own Son to suffer and die, precisely because He found our lives so precious to Him that He would give up heaven to conquer death. As we are making decisions, unfortunately sometimes feeling as if we are “playing God,” as the NPR episode mentioned, we need to give ourselves the grace that God has so freely given to us, and to treat all life as precious.

*I write these stories and don't necessarily publish right away. I try and get patient permission to take photos.  I also try to use a random picture that is similar to what I'm talking about, but usually isn't the particular person. This protects patient identity a bit. Although there are no laws as in the US, there is certainly common sense and I'm not blind to the fact that internet is available in most places of the world. 

Our favorite moments of the day are when we walk home at lunch or after work and our precious kids run out to greet us with a big hug. (Sydney was pretending to be shy... or she just woke up. She's rarely cuddly, but I'll take it!)