A look at several more of our patients...

   Last week we had a lady come to the clinic from quite a ways away. It took her several hours to walk here. She had very high blood pressure and what looks like a carotid aneurysm! She has this place on her neck a little bigger than my thumb size that we could see pulsing with every heart beat. Apparently she has had this about two years already and it hasn't changed in size. All we can do for her is help her lower her blood pressure which will hopefully reduce the risk of it rupturing...
   On Friday last week the orphanage girls came up to Oriani. One of the girls' parents were here. They wanted to do something in the afternoon and we hadn't been to Gros Cheval to change the dressings on the man with a broken back for a while so decided to take them all along. We had met a health agent two weeks ago who said he could change this man's dressings every few days for us so we gave him a box of supplies. Come to find out, no one has been to this man's house even once to change his dressings! I was not happy about that! Keith called the guy and the story is they thought we meant a different patient so have been going to this other person's house and changing their dressings. We don't know of another patient with bad wounds but it could be there is one.
     To get to this house we drove a ways then took a short walk through a field and then through some banana trees into the yard. We find this man slouched in a wooden chair inside the house. The dressings are still on but are very dirty. The room doesn't have a pleasant smell either so Keith and Todd ( Tasha's dad) carry this man in his chair out into the sunshine. He has no feeling or movement from his mid chest down so I helped with holding his feet. We see there is a wheelchair in his room, we didn't know he had one. We ask why someone hasn't helped him outside earlier. The sister in law who is there says she can't move him herself and can't get anybody to help her. Keith asks more questions about this because it doesn't make any sense. We walked through someone's yard to get there where there were probably six men working and by now several others have come to see what "the whites" have come for. The sad story comes out bit by bit... If the sister in law so much as touches this man to help him with anything... No one will eat what she has cooked for the rest of the day... They don't give him food every day... People think he may have something contagious... The family really wants this man to die...it's a very sad story. We were able to ask the patient some more questions in our language because he knows English and everyone standing around wouldn't be able to understand. He is a Christian... Another time when we arrived he was reading his bible. His mother is dead. He doesn't have anyone who is willing to help him, nobody wants to touch him.  Yet he has courage and faith in God. He asked that we would remember him every time we pray and I don't think that will be difficult. I also had brought him some medicine. He asked if he needed to drink when he took them... I guess sometimes he isn't given anything to drink. For interests sake... I could see and feel his leg bone while cleaning one of his wounds... Candace was along too so while we were changing the dressings she was talking to his family. When she told them he needed food every day... Good food, extra protein, etc... To help heal his wounds, they looked at her in disbelief... Keith had a very touching prayer before we left, I hope it impressed everyone else around who heard it as much as it did us.
    After leaving there we met up with a man whose sister we had taken down to the hospital to get treatment for HIV. We walked to their house which " wasn't far at all, just over this hill" turned out to be up this mountainside, down through a ravine, up another hill, etc...This is another very sad story. This girl is about 26 years old and has two children. Her husband is not a good man and left her for his many other girlfriends. He is who she got this disease from. We had tested her at our clinic because when she came in several weeks ago she was just wasting away. Her dad had brought her to the clinic. When we told her what she had she begged us not to tell her family. She said they will kick her out of the house if they find out. Apparently she doesn't trust any of her siblings either with this information. The hospital was understanding of the situation also so she is getting treatment but the family doesn't know exactly what for. She is a beautiful young lady, but so wasted away from this sickness. She also is a Christian. When we got there she was in bed (she is too weak to walk) with a tract of bible verses she had picked up at the clinic close to her heart. She kept this with her while the family brought her outside so she could sit and visit with us a few minutes. She was so short of breath she had to pause between words to breathe. I don't think she will be here much longer...
    Another patient we saw last week has been to the clinic in the past for dressing changes several times a week but hadn't been to the clinic since I've been here. She has a history of elephantiasis. It causes lymph nodes to not work properly and can cause large amounts of swelling. Her left leg  had wounds from poor circulation from this. When she came this time she was unconscious. Her heart rate was about 34 beats per minute. She was dying. By this time her wound in her groin was so large I couldn't have fit my fist into it easily with room to spare. The wound tissue was gray. She had obviously been slowly bleeding out from this wound also because she was VERY anemic. We gave her some IVF 's so that the family would feel that we did something but told them she would probably die very soon. She died later that day.
    Then on Saturday a lady came to the house with a very swollen cheek. I didn't know if it was an abscess or cancer so we went to the clinic to examine further. She said she had been to a dentist earlier but he hadn't had time to pull her tooth. We gave her a shot for pain because she couldn't even open her mouth far enough to swallow a pill then put some lidocaine in her cheek and stuck in a needle. It was a huge abscess! We used a scalpel to open it a little more and got amazing amounts of pus out. After a while we were debating whether we should call it good and put a dressing on it or go a bit deeper. We opted to go a bit deeper and the results were astounding! I don't see how so much nasty stuff could be in a cheek but the swelling did go clear around under her jaw too. Then we put a drain in so this wound could continue to drain. The lady was from quite a ways away so we asked if she had any family around. She did have some family right close to our house so she spent night and got her dressing changed again that night and the next morning. Then I gave her supplies to change the dressing at home until she comes back on Wednesday. The problem is, Todd and I are both afraid she will need more than a dentist to heal this. She had had this problem for twenty days prior to coming to us so it could easy be there is infection in her jaw bone.    ... So that has been my life for the past week...