I Can Do All Things Through Christ Who Strengthens Me..

I kind of grudgingly went to the clinic again. “Lord, I don't know if I can see another patient.” It had been the craziest week. It didn't help that I hadn't recovered from Malaria yet. I was really sick 2 weekends ago. It really knocked me down, but God really does have good timing, although I wish He would have given me one more day to rest.

I was super sick Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then Monday I was still not feeling very good. Michelle had been picking up my end while I was sick. And Brian, the other nurse, was still in the lowlands taking care of patients that we kept sending out to the Hospital. That means that Michelle had to do Sunday. Anne, the nurse in training helped too with the medication preparations, but Sundays are SO busy at the clinic. It is market day in Kemantian, so everyone stops by to get medicine too. We've seen up to 70 patients on Sundays.

Michelle had pushed hard during those days. Even Sabbath is not much of a rest after church a lot of the time. I was at least a little more functional Monday, so we planned for Michelle to have Tuesday off to recoup. Tuesdays weren't usually that busy...Well, that wasn't a normal Tuesday. Talk about hitting the ground running. My headache hadn't totally ceased, and my stomach still didn't feel completely settled, but all of that was put on the back burner this day.

People are really sick right now. We had 2 inpatients, 2 infant IV's to maintain and a ton of patients on top of it. When baby's are inpatients it usually means midnight and 6am meds too. Not too mention that my own nausea was still keeping me awake most of the night. That and wrestling with God. And then, (here's where God's timing comes in) Michelle ended up getting SUPER sick Monday night with violent vomiting and diarrhea. Tuesday, she was not doing very good. She had lost A LOT of fluid and even after drinking 3 liters of water and ORS that day, her blood pressure still wasn't that great by the end of the day. She was getting cold and clammy. Thankfully, I had just finished with my patients in the evening when she was doing pretty bad. We decided we'd better get some IV fluids in her. Thankfully, that really perked her right up. She rested for one more day on Wednesday, and was feeling much better that night. And that was good because around 10pm, we got news that a stretcher was sent to Niyug (a village about 15-20 minutes away) and a patient was very sick that was coming to us.

So down they came with a half unconscious boy who was dry heaving. With Malaria, sometimes people can have really bad GERD like symptoms (like heartburn) and it can be bad enough to put them into shock. That's what we were thinking when they first told us what might be wrong with him. We found out however once we got him, that he had just drank a TON of alcohol and was pretty sick from it. So at least it wasn't shock and he wasn't bottoming out on us or anything, but we still had to get some IV fluid in him and shove charcoal down his throat. We gave him the good ole' sternal rub to get him to swallow and in about half an hour he was conscious again. But it was definitely good to have 2 of us there.

Brian was able to come rescue us eventually. He came back Friday, late, and Michelle and I were able to have all of Sabbath off. We kind of were able to catch up on a lot of sleep we lost that week. Good ole' Ibuprofen and Dramamine got me through Sunday, and Thank God, this week has been dead. He really knows our limits. And He also knows just how to stretch us to make us better people.

It is these kind of moments when we can experience reliance on God, because we are too sick and emotionally sick too (homesick) to go on. Somehow we got through it. Though there were tears and stress... I am convinced that it is these kind of experiences that God is giving me as a portion of the oil that the 5 wise women had in the parable of the 10 virgins. We need to experience trust in God and need to experience being stretched and molded. I can't give that experience to anyone else. I can't give my prayers and emotions and my conclusions to anyone else. It is all part of the process to make me more ready for God's Holy Spirit.

I pray that God will give you experiences too. That he will turn curses from Satan into blessings and growth. God, I hated that week. I want to go home because of that week. I wish I was a teacher and not a nurse because of that week. I feel like I'm still recovering emotionally and spiritually from that week. But I do thank You for being with me that week. And I hope that the next week I have like that, will be easier than this one because I'll have grown from the last one. Please don't let me have another week like that. But if there is one, I pray that I'll learn the lessons I need to learn to be more complete and fully equipped to do every good work through faith in You.