Bere 2018 #11
There’s a knock at my door. Avava (a friend from Cameroon) and I have been sitting her talking. I open the door and its one of the student missionaries with the two AHI lab guys, Ben and Erik, that just arrived yesterday to set up lab equipment. They’ve come over for the Friday night singing and worship that the missionaries do every Friday. I didn’t know it was going to be here, but I’m happy it is. We have plenty of room in our place to host it. Eventually everyone show up and we sing hymns, in English. Then, as they’re used to doing, everyone goes around the circle and shares what they are thankful for this week. I mention that I’m thankful for the prompting of the Holy Spirit. He helped me decide to operate on the 17 year old kid that had vomiting without other signs of bowel obstruction. That he is doing well and I am glad that I operated on him. After out thanksgiving, we sang hymns. I really enjoyed as everyone sang and there was at times 2 or 3 part harmony. We than shared food. Some we had here and some they brought. We talked for a few more hours.
After everyone left I went to the hospital to pick up the ipad that I place orders on. I had left the ipad on the pediatric ward, where the only charging cord happens to be. A child of about 2 years old had just come into the hospital and the nurse wanted me to see him. He was eating a banyee (a small deep fried lump of bread, kind of like a doughnut without a toping). His abdomen is very distended and rock hard on the left side. His father says his abdomen is the reason he came. He eats fine, poops fine, and doesn’t vomit. Recently started to have a cough a couple days ago. He has an ultrasound report from another place. I can’t read all of it, but it seems to say he has something on his kidney. I wonder if this is a huge cystic kidney? Even though its 11pm I decide to do the ultrasound then, as the next day is Sabbath and I hope to go to church and not get stuck in the hospital. I take them to the ultrasound room, put ultrasound jelly on his abdomen and take a look. I see a huge solid tumor. This is cancer! I cannot get pathology here so there is no point in biopsying it. I also can’t treat whatever it is, even if I could biopsy it. I share the bad news with the father and they head back to the pediatric ward. The nurse doesn’t really speak his language so there isn’t great communication. I head to the other wards, to ask if they have any problems that I need to deal with before going to sleep.
As I lay in bed, I read my book and also think about that little boy. I look forward to Heaven, when we won’t have any more pain and these diseases will not affect people any more. And most of all we will be with Jesus.