Another Monday
Our daughter Saralynn arrived in Abuja last Thursday morning at 4:30. We picked her up at the airport and were back in Jos by 9:30. After a few hours of unpacking, seeing patients, and lunch, we were off again for a weekend at the Miango retreat center (one of SIM’s ministries). The director there had offered us a free weekend in exchange for my help on some computer issues in their office, so we couldn’t say no. A pretty good time overall, but Saralynn and I were sick, and she was also jet lagged, so it wasn’t the best time we’ve had. Still, better to be sick there than here. This time our unit was right by the zip line, so Luke had the best time of us all.After an early start at 4:30 because I couldn’t sleep, I spent most of the day today working on computers. The laptop I took for the Miango office has a flaky built-in network adapter so needed a new one on a card. Then another missionary brought me a CHDNB (crashed hard drive, no backup), which has pretty much taken up the rest of the day and evening apart from a couple of hours in the hospital. That laptop’s running a recovery program, which says it has another 16 hours and 25 minutes to go. We’ll see. Computer gurus are really hard to recruit for mission work, so if you are one and want to come, just give a holler and you’ll be snapped up in a jiffy, whether for short or long term. It’s nice to see how smoothly things get done (usually) when real experts are in charge.
I wasn’t at the hospital long today but there was an interesting case: triplets! Even more unusual was the fact that the third baby was not born until 30 hours after the other two. The mother first went to a primary health center where the two were delivered, and at some point the third was noted. No one in conference this morning understood why they waited the 30 hours, but they did. Still, the baby was finally born here and has done fine. The weights were 1.2, 1.3, and 1.6 kg (2-12, 2-15, and 3-8 pounds-oz) which in my limited experience is pretty big for triplets.
Staffing frustration: only one of our four doctors is available to do the work on peds, at least much of the day. Two have been taken away to fill in in the main hospital clinic. I knew about the one already, last week, and found out this morning that they wanted another of the team to go to the clinic after rounding in pediatrics. But then I discovered that our HIV/AIDS doctor is also away for the week … off to a conference in Kano. Strange. I don’t understand what the program planners expect to happen to the patients for a week while the doctor is gone, but of course we’re filling in somehow. End of complaint.
I do enjoy the chance to do a variety of tasks, though, as long as non-medical things don’t swamp me. And I do have it better than the missionary doctor I was reading about tonight, who was expected to provide the meat for the 160 patients by hunting for it. (to africa with love: a bush doctor’s story, by James Foulkes. I haven’t read the book, only a brief review.)