September 24

Another week has come. This would be my 4th week here. In some ways it is going by fast but also slow at the same time. It’s still raining quite a bit here so it’s not too hot. I believe there’s about 1month left of the rainy season. When the dry season comes, it is very hot as this area has lots of limestone as roads. Today two girls from the team have left for New Zealand. At the end of the week the rest of team will leave as well. I will be left on my own then. A bit scary really. One of the PNG health care workers will move into the house to keep me company. I’m glad for many reasons because of safety reason, also if someone calls me for emergency and I don’t wake up she may be able to hear them. Also I’ll be able to learn more about the PNG culture from her.

Papua New Guinea is indeed a linguist paradise. I cannot believe how many languages are out there and they are not even related—completely diff languages all together. Pidgin is still the main language but I must say I still need the staff to translate for me. The local coastal language is called ‘Motu’. So I’m picking up medical vocabulary for Pidgin and Motu. Pidgin is mostly from English words but there are some German words as well as Germans use to colonize PNG long time ago. So most PNG people speak 3-4 languages. I believe they are quite good in languages.

Over the weekend I had a scary case. I was called to a vaginal bleed 1 day after delivery. They had sutured her and she was bleeding overnight. Funnily the patient didn’t think to tell the nurse and thought it was normal. Life is hard here and so they tolerate a lot more things than we do in the western world. Her towel was soaked with blood and by the time the nurse examine her, she had a continuous bleeding. When I came I undid the stitch. I couldn’t find the source of bleed, it was just pouring. I stitched her up but it didn’t stop it, so I opened it up again and stitched again. It again didn’t stop the bleeding. So I again opened it up and when I was about to give up (problem is I can’t give up because then she would just bleed to death). So by the third time she finally stopped bleeding. I must say it was a bit scary. God was good though, because before I started I had prayed with patient. So I didn’t panic at all. I know God will not give me cases I cannot handle so this was a good experience and given me a bit of confidence. I know it was a simple case but with horrible consequences if bleeding was not stopped.

There’s a continuous flow of TB patients as usual. We have about 50-60 T B patients I think.

Please pray
1. I don’t develop TB
2. Simple joys every day to keep me going
3. Wisdom and discernment to know what to do with medical, surgical and obstetric cases
4. They are waiting for a PNG doctor to arrive, so please pray that the doctor will come ASAP