Flying Like Crazy
Life has been intensely crazy lately. There hasn’t even been time to blog….one of my favorite pass times. That should be a clue to me, that I need to cut back. I’ll hit the highlights.
My last blog was about Jacob getting burnt. To which he has healed in quick order. Thankfully there were no complications. One week from Jacobs injury….Nathaniel comes crying into the house stating that he got shocked/burned at the new hanger. Apparently, he was helping Aubrey vacuum out the van and the electrical cord had some exposed wires. He touched them, receiving a 220 volt jolt. He said he couldn’t let go until it threw him down on the floor. Fortunately the electrical current went in one finger and out the other. Leaving blistering burns, but otherwise unharmed. Nathaniel had a birthday in March and is now 8. He ordered a British trifle for his birthday treat. I’m glad a snippet of their British heritage shines through in desert requests. : ) Nathaniel also came down with his first case of Tropika malaria. Which is the most dangerous. It can cross the blood brain barrier. Seeing how quickly his fever rose so high, I can see how this can be so life threatening without the proper diagnosis and medicines. Thankfully, within 24 hours, his fever was well controlled and within 3 days, Nathaniel was his usually happy self. As malaria claims thousands of lives a year, I am blessed that we could treat so easily.
Nathaniel’s burns. Underneath all of the blisters were deeper burns. : ( We are rejoicing, because it could have been so much worse.
Jacob’s burns are completely healed. Just still has different shades of skin. : )
Birthday boy flying his kite. It was super windy, so Daddy was needed to help.
Aubrey and Andrew are only 1 1/2 an inch from passing Darron. The first words out of Andrew’s mouth almost every day at pick up time are, “Did you make us anything to eat?” The fridge is always getting wiped out. What are left overs? Aubrey is really enjoying the French Horn. They are both challenged in basketball. There last game is this Thursday when they play against the Dad’s. Darron has agreed to play and we are all looking forward to the entertainment. : ) Both are just a lot of fun. I think raising teenagers is awesome. They are staying really close to us and both Darron and I are so enjoying this phase of parenting. Darron and Aubrey are still working on the boat project. Strip by strip. An hour here and an hour there.
Teenagers!!!! : ) There is a flower that has a red dye. The guys love to paint their hair with it. This time, it was face art.
Our van is at last legally registered! We have the proper license plate. We have driver licenses. Yeah! That feels better.
In my last blog I referenced Bob Roberts having his appendix out. He seemed to be recovering well and then took a turn for the worse and started running a fever and fatigued. They went to a local lab and the white blood cell count was 19,000. One hour later the blood was drawn at the hospital and the white blood cell count was in the 11,000 range. Crazy the discrepancy. Kind of destroys some of the trust in one of the institutions. Take your pick. Which results do you like better?
By the next day at noon, we had decided that it was time for Bob to get out of the country. They were at the airport within an hour of making that decision. Bob was so sick that I put on his socks and shoes and he didn’t care at all. This is not the Bob Roberts anyone knows. By the time they were in Jakarta (9ish hours later), Jan was calling me saying that Bob had vomited and it smelt like stool. Then within the hour, she is ringing again to say that his appendix wound is pouring foul smelling drainage (when he left here it was dry). At this point, I urged them to go to a hospital in Jakarta. It was full. They did give IV fluids, antibiotics, squeeze the wound and give dressing changes for the trip. Jan knew that they would press on to Penang. It was around 11:00 at night when all this was going on. I was so concerned for Bob. If this was indeed stool, then I felt like his life was in critical condition. I was second guessing our decision to not medevac him. I felt so impressed to stay up and pray and intercede on his behalf. Finally about 2ish I felt that I could sleep at last.
I didn’t feel released from the weight of his care until 5 p.m. the next day when I learnt that Bob had made it to Penang and they had taken him immediately to the hospital and cleaned out the wound really well. Allowing it to heal from the inside out. Apparently it was not bowel, after all. Oh I was so relieved. And so I grown, because more and more us nurses are called upon to help make huge decisions in regard to the care of our missionaries here. I need to learn to be involved, but then not worry so much about the outcome. But I have always worried about my patients! : )
This last weekend was a challenge for me and a big reason why there has been no time to do ANYTHING! : ) I was asked to speak at a women’s retreat, where 60 missionary ladies would gather. I felt this was a huge honor and took the request very seriously. I felt led to speak on Forgiveness. Taking most of my thoughts from the book, “Forgive to Live” by Dr. Tibbett's. Which is an excellent read. I felt I was well received and it was really fun to speak again. This is one of my loves from college days, but hard to do when raising a young family. I knew I needed to put my public speaking aside for a while when my second child was 2. I was speaking for Darron and this dear little boy decided to make all his markers into a big long sword and come and march around the pulpit. Oh, this makes me laugh, just to write about it. There is a season to everything!!!!!
I am still really enjoying my time at the clinic. Today I placed a fiber glass cast on my first real patient to have a broken bone (that I was responsible for). Even tried to reduce the fracture, all from a 3 hour casting class in Thailand. Gulp! The x-rays will show tomorrow if anything happened in that reduction. I was too timid to be too aggressive. We also had some down time at the clinic today. So we taught Mandy and one of the high school girls how to put in IV’s. Mandy got an IV in me and I took in a 100 or so cc of IV fluid. : ) Hydration is a good thing.
Our high school student is holding up the catheter to the needle here, because when we pulled it out of Mandy it was all bent!??!
These are the main highlights of the past several weeks. Hopefully more thoughts will come leaking out in blogs soon, as you all patiently wait. I’m trying to slow life down from the flying like crazy mode to the cruising mode. We are already beginning to work on annual leave plans. The way things are zipping along, we will be airborne before we know it. Taco Bell get ready, the Boyd family is about to arrive.
My last blog was about Jacob getting burnt. To which he has healed in quick order. Thankfully there were no complications. One week from Jacobs injury….Nathaniel comes crying into the house stating that he got shocked/burned at the new hanger. Apparently, he was helping Aubrey vacuum out the van and the electrical cord had some exposed wires. He touched them, receiving a 220 volt jolt. He said he couldn’t let go until it threw him down on the floor. Fortunately the electrical current went in one finger and out the other. Leaving blistering burns, but otherwise unharmed. Nathaniel had a birthday in March and is now 8. He ordered a British trifle for his birthday treat. I’m glad a snippet of their British heritage shines through in desert requests. : ) Nathaniel also came down with his first case of Tropika malaria. Which is the most dangerous. It can cross the blood brain barrier. Seeing how quickly his fever rose so high, I can see how this can be so life threatening without the proper diagnosis and medicines. Thankfully, within 24 hours, his fever was well controlled and within 3 days, Nathaniel was his usually happy self. As malaria claims thousands of lives a year, I am blessed that we could treat so easily.
Nathaniel’s burns. Underneath all of the blisters were deeper burns. : ( We are rejoicing, because it could have been so much worse.
Jacob’s burns are completely healed. Just still has different shades of skin. : )
Birthday boy flying his kite. It was super windy, so Daddy was needed to help.
Aubrey and Andrew are only 1 1/2 an inch from passing Darron. The first words out of Andrew’s mouth almost every day at pick up time are, “Did you make us anything to eat?” The fridge is always getting wiped out. What are left overs? Aubrey is really enjoying the French Horn. They are both challenged in basketball. There last game is this Thursday when they play against the Dad’s. Darron has agreed to play and we are all looking forward to the entertainment. : ) Both are just a lot of fun. I think raising teenagers is awesome. They are staying really close to us and both Darron and I are so enjoying this phase of parenting. Darron and Aubrey are still working on the boat project. Strip by strip. An hour here and an hour there.
Teenagers!!!! : ) There is a flower that has a red dye. The guys love to paint their hair with it. This time, it was face art.
Our van is at last legally registered! We have the proper license plate. We have driver licenses. Yeah! That feels better.
In my last blog I referenced Bob Roberts having his appendix out. He seemed to be recovering well and then took a turn for the worse and started running a fever and fatigued. They went to a local lab and the white blood cell count was 19,000. One hour later the blood was drawn at the hospital and the white blood cell count was in the 11,000 range. Crazy the discrepancy. Kind of destroys some of the trust in one of the institutions. Take your pick. Which results do you like better?
By the next day at noon, we had decided that it was time for Bob to get out of the country. They were at the airport within an hour of making that decision. Bob was so sick that I put on his socks and shoes and he didn’t care at all. This is not the Bob Roberts anyone knows. By the time they were in Jakarta (9ish hours later), Jan was calling me saying that Bob had vomited and it smelt like stool. Then within the hour, she is ringing again to say that his appendix wound is pouring foul smelling drainage (when he left here it was dry). At this point, I urged them to go to a hospital in Jakarta. It was full. They did give IV fluids, antibiotics, squeeze the wound and give dressing changes for the trip. Jan knew that they would press on to Penang. It was around 11:00 at night when all this was going on. I was so concerned for Bob. If this was indeed stool, then I felt like his life was in critical condition. I was second guessing our decision to not medevac him. I felt so impressed to stay up and pray and intercede on his behalf. Finally about 2ish I felt that I could sleep at last.
I didn’t feel released from the weight of his care until 5 p.m. the next day when I learnt that Bob had made it to Penang and they had taken him immediately to the hospital and cleaned out the wound really well. Allowing it to heal from the inside out. Apparently it was not bowel, after all. Oh I was so relieved. And so I grown, because more and more us nurses are called upon to help make huge decisions in regard to the care of our missionaries here. I need to learn to be involved, but then not worry so much about the outcome. But I have always worried about my patients! : )
This last weekend was a challenge for me and a big reason why there has been no time to do ANYTHING! : ) I was asked to speak at a women’s retreat, where 60 missionary ladies would gather. I felt this was a huge honor and took the request very seriously. I felt led to speak on Forgiveness. Taking most of my thoughts from the book, “Forgive to Live” by Dr. Tibbett's. Which is an excellent read. I felt I was well received and it was really fun to speak again. This is one of my loves from college days, but hard to do when raising a young family. I knew I needed to put my public speaking aside for a while when my second child was 2. I was speaking for Darron and this dear little boy decided to make all his markers into a big long sword and come and march around the pulpit. Oh, this makes me laugh, just to write about it. There is a season to everything!!!!!
I am still really enjoying my time at the clinic. Today I placed a fiber glass cast on my first real patient to have a broken bone (that I was responsible for). Even tried to reduce the fracture, all from a 3 hour casting class in Thailand. Gulp! The x-rays will show tomorrow if anything happened in that reduction. I was too timid to be too aggressive. We also had some down time at the clinic today. So we taught Mandy and one of the high school girls how to put in IV’s. Mandy got an IV in me and I took in a 100 or so cc of IV fluid. : ) Hydration is a good thing.
Our high school student is holding up the catheter to the needle here, because when we pulled it out of Mandy it was all bent!??!
These are the main highlights of the past several weeks. Hopefully more thoughts will come leaking out in blogs soon, as you all patiently wait. I’m trying to slow life down from the flying like crazy mode to the cruising mode. We are already beginning to work on annual leave plans. The way things are zipping along, we will be airborne before we know it. Taco Bell get ready, the Boyd family is about to arrive.
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