Bless the Lord, O my soul

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pits, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Psalm 103:2-5

Providing advanced medical care in W. Africa is an adventure in frequent frustrations and heartbreak, contrasted—in cases when available supplies and care meet huge needs—by moments of unmatched gratification. Our lives here are not unadulterated strings of humanitarian ecstasy, but the Lord in His goodness allows us much to smile about. Today I’m pleased to offer you these smiles.

KADI

Kadi has been a frequent visitor to our outpatient clinic, as her mom takes extremely good care of her. So when she fell into hot porridge, burning both of her hands, her mom brought her in quickly. The burns seemed quite deep at the time, and because burns on the hands are difficult no matter how deep, I was dreading her treatment course. To add to all of this, Kadi has mental handicaps, so I wasn’t sure how she would do with all the dressing changes. After several days of using sedatives during dressing changes, I noticed that her burns were actually significantly better and probably would not need surgery. Because sedatives carry risks and side-effects, I felt we should try to do the changes without them, if she could tolerate them.

So, I proceeded with lots of candy and a very nice stuffed animal that I named Baby Jacob. With her mom at her side, and Paul, a nurse and good friend, helping me, we removed the bandages and began to gently clean the burns. She did amazingly well through all of this, but when we started putting a new dressing on—usually a painless process—she started screaming. Not catching what she was saying, I stepped back a bit alarmed, only to hear her mom and Paul break out into laughter. Paul informed me that she was yelling at me because I wasn’t going fast enough and she wanted to be done. With all haste, we finished the dressing and sent her on her way.

The next appointment, I asked her if she brought Baby Jacob back with her. She promptly informed me that she’d given him away to her older sister, but that she’d like another. I went to the office and found a rather homely little doll (I think it was supposed to be Glenda from Wizard of Oz). Presenting this “lesser” gift to her, I named it Baby Paul. To my chagrin, Baby Jacob never made another showing, but Baby Paul, much loved, made it to all future appointments.

Her wounds healed rapidly under the careful supervision of her mom. The only problem was that the smaller her dressings became, the more impatient she was to have it done and over with it—so I got yelled at quite frequently. Two and a half weeks after she was burned, we removed her last dressing. She went home with full mobility in her hands, a smile on her face, and of course, Baby Paul in her arms.

CHATOU

We “found” Chatou in the village of Fiza, while there visiting Samuel, a church-planting pastor. We were in his courtyard after church, and several people came by to be prayed for. There were a number of people with wounds, but Chatou’s story was the most capturing. She had had large leg ulcers for 20 years (since the age of 18), and her family, having tried everything to get them to heal, sent her to the pastor, believing the ulcers to be an act of sorcery. We prayed for her and Samuel asked if I wanted to see the ulcers. Not having the supplies to do a proper redressing, I encouraged him to simply bring her by the hospital. He informed us that the family was not taking responsibility for her care anymore and wouldn’t pay for things at the hospital. We struck a deal that if she could find someone to stay with in Coco, we would cover her bill.

When she arrived several days later, I opened the dressing to find a hugely infected wound on her leg and another smaller one on the other leg. We did several lab tests, put her on antibiotics, and started daily dressing changes. The labs all came back negative, so we were not really sure what we were dealing with. However, a little more than two weeks later, the wounds looked clean enough to be skin grafted (a surgery where we take a thin layer of skin from the thigh and transplant it to the wound—both sites heal very quickly with skin instead of scar tissue). We began to prepare her for this.

But that is only half the story. Most of Western medicine wants to deal only with rational, biological sources of problems; however, in recent years there has been an increasing recognition that we cannot separate a person into neat, tidy biologic, emotional, and spiritual boxes. These domains are certainly connected. As a C, I absolutely believe this, and though I want to treat physical problems with the best care that we find through our study of the physical sciences, I also believe the emotional and spiritual domains need to be treated. And in this case, Chatou was living under the assumption that her problem was spiritual—that she had been cursed by some ill-intentioned sorcerer. The weight of living under such a curse was causing her much pain and she had searched everywhere—in I, in every traditional religion—to find a cure. We had the opportunity to pray with and for her every day, asking the Lord to bring healing to her. We witnessed to the Love and Goodness of Jesus and that He brings about healing to all areas of our life.

In the end, the skin graft took wonderfully, and a little more than a month after she came to us, she went home, healed from an ordeal that had lasted more than 20 years. Two weeks after she arrived home, she came to the pastor’s home with her husband and brother-in-law. Overjoyed at this new found freedom, she expressed her desire to follow Jesus. Her husband and brother-in-law actually asked the pastor to “make” her a C. Chatou is now a follower of Jesus. (The two men are “observing” for a time before they make any decisions).

I truly believe that our physical care, our emotional love, and our prayers worked together to bring whole healing to her whole person, in a process that can neither be described as completely miraculous nor completely natural. But Chatou knows, much like the blind man in Acts, that she was wounded and now she is healed. And today she smiles.

SEYTOU

Frequently in wound care, a case arrives that makes my heart sink. I think it has something to do with knowing that it will take weeks (often months) to get the wound to heal, and that means countless difficult dressing changes for both the patient and caregiver, and lots of pain, despite our best effort, for the patient. When Seytou came in with her arms charred from a cooking fire, my first question was, “will this girl even really survive?”

She had been kneeling for a long time to stoke the fire, and when she stood up she became light headed and fell into the fire, spilling a pot of boiling porridge onto herself. Her face, chest, both hands, and right arm were extensively burned. We did the initial debridement, and it seemed a good possibility that she would lose the right arm.

In the weeks that followed, we did our routine dressing changes, praying the Lord would give us wisdom and work a miracle in this situation. I watched her stoically endure the pain of the burns all day long. Though she never cried, the pain was evident on her face. We gave her the best pain medications we could, but what we have here wouldn’t even be considered sufficient treatment for minor burns in the States.

About two weeks in, the transformation began. First the wounds on her face and chest closed. Then her left hand healed. Her face bore fewer creases, and she began to walk around. Then she started to crack the occasional smile. She began visiting Jessica in the office to get coloring books, crayons, and Bible stories in Jula. She would sit for hours watching the Jesus Film, the story of Moses and Joseph and other movies that we play in our waiting area. (Her grandmother who was staying with her also became an expert color-er and loved watching the movies as well! Lots of firsts in her old life.) She gained strength by the day, and became an absolute joy to see every morning.

We did a skin graft to cover the deepest burns on her right arm. Two weeks later, (an amazingly short 6 weeks after coming to us), we sent her home. She was full of smiles, diminished only slightly because I think she is going to miss all the coloring and movies!

Please continue to pray for her and her family. There are a couple of C in the family, but Seytou and her immediate family, as they told us, “have not yet made the decision” to follow the Lord.