Highlights and Lowlights

Hmm...

This week has been packed full of activity. I have learned so much. It feels like the week was so long and yet very short. I am tired and leaving again for Zimba Hospital early tomorrow morning, so this is just a quick update. I guess you could say it is a little peek into the highlights and lowlights of my week.

Monday: Highlight was interacting with a two year old girl that came into Dr. Jain's clinic for a cough. She was simply hilarious. She and her siblings found great joy in listening to their hearts and our hearts through our stethoscopes.
Highlight number two was learning and practicing the Lifehouse "Everything" skit with seven girls on my team for World Hope Staff Devos on Wednesday morning.

Tuesday: Highlight was being able to spend the morning at Martin Hospice here in Choma. It was designed for HIV/AIDS patients and instead of it being a place where people come to die, their aim is to heal and restore and then to send home. I met Sister Virginia, an Irish nun who has lived here for 30 years and is in charge of Spiritual Care in the hospice. She was pretty great.
I guess my lowlight is also a really huge highlight. I met a patient who had been very hard to get to sit up, much less open up and when I and another student came in to visit with her, she talked nonstop for 45mins. Her story was terribly sad and difficult to listen to, but I know that God put us there at that time to just sit, listen, and be with her.

Wednesday: WHIZ devotions was a big highlight. God used that time to touch many hearts. Another was seeing the good that a Pediatric Antiretroviral Therapy clinic is doing here in Choma. So many children had been very ill and once they began treatment had increased their immunity considerably to the point that they look and feel like healthy kids. The sad part is that no amount of therapy can make them HIV negative. However, their quality of life can be increased exponentially.
Lowlight: While we were at the ART clinic, a very sick little boy came in for treatment. It was heartbreaking to see. I don' think you can ever really know how HIV/AIDS is impacting our world unless you hold those fatherless kids, comfort grieving mothers, and see the eyes of those who are waiting in line for treatment.

Thursday and Friday: We spent these days at Chikankata Salvation Army Hospital in a very rural part of Zambia. I spent the majority of my time both days in Maternity which included Antenatal, Labor and Delivery, Postnatal, and a NICU.
Highlight: I was able to assist with the birth of an adorable little boy. It was quite a complicated delivery and I prayed the entire time for that baby to come out screaming. He sure did.
Lowlight: One of the babies born on Thursday morning was three monthes premature. His little lungs were not fully developed yet and he was in the NICU with his mother watching over him. His mom had already lost seven babies and was scared she would lose this one too. Later in the evening around 9pm, we noticed he had stopped breathing, but we were able to resuscitate him. However, the next morning I learned that he had died in the night. That was one of those times when you just have to trust that God is good.

This weekend has been spent catching up on homework. Church was great today, although I had trouble concentrating on the service due to the children climbing all over me. :-)

Hoep all is well on your side of the world.

Much love.