"Day by Day"

(Note: This was to be post on 9/3/07

Hello Friends,
It has been about a week since we wrote you last. You have today off for Labor Day, but for us it was an ordinary day. Today marks the 4 week mark for us at Tenwek. Names are starting to become easier to remember and faces easier to recognize. Day to day things are beginning to become a little more routine. However, doing things like smelling garlic in the kitchen reminds us at times of our favorite restaurants back home.
Ashley went for his first real “run” this week. The altitude is still a factor but the scenery is so beautiful.
Maggie has also made some new Kenyan friends who live nearby. The youngest is Angela (about the same age as Maggie). Amaurice is the oldest and she has a twin brother, Alan. They have another brother, Duncan, and sister Allie. Maggie and the kids like to play ball, read books and walk around exploring together. Maggie also began attending a weekly play group with some of the other MKs which she seems to enjoy.
Avacados are bountiful here. There are several trees growing around the compound. Sarah bought 3 huge ones for the equivalent of a few cents each. She says the same ones back home would cost several dollars. Then the next day one of the helpers on the compound brought Sarah several more that he picked out of a tree. This made for some good guacamole.
Yesterday Sarah reached the 10 week mark in her pregnancy. The ultrasonographer here offered to do an ultrasound for us last week. We took him up on the offer and the dates and measurements matched exactly. It is such a blessing to our baby’s little heart beat. Sarah is still battling sickness, but is managing to battle through. On the day she ran out of her nausea medicine one the local doctors found his huge stash of the same drug (although it is from Bangladesh) and gave it to Sarah. Praise the Lord.
Ashley is beginning to settle into the medical thing here, but some things are still difficult. He had 3 unsuccessful codes in one day. However, he did have one successful one yesterday. He also has to make difficult choices such as who gets to be one of the 2 ventilators and who does not. This past weekend Ashley was on call and on Sunday had to round by himself, which took almost 5 hours. However, on an early morning trip to the ICU on the nurses stepped away and sat with another nurse and began singing “Nothing but the blood of Jesus”. This is truly what these patients needed to hear. They said that they did this early every morning.
The locals are very sensitive to changes in the weather. It may be in the low 50s and we will be in a long sleeve shirt while some of the locals are in jackets in ski masks. One of the ICU nurses wears a parka almost every morning!
This past week we received several letters and packages of goodies from back home. This was a true blessing. We are also able to use Skype now, so if you have computer with this, look us up. The only thing is we are having trouble buying more minutes. We also have the Mac up and running wireless online, which is a huge blessing. We are still having some issues withe sending pictures, which we hope to resolve soon.
Ashley is starting to fall into his leadership roles. He actually got to meet with a few of his residents today and set up meeting times to review some educational materials with them. The OB service as struggling as several attendings are gone at once. Ashley had to impromptu help revise the schedule to make sure this service was covered. Also several of the outpatient workers left recently, leaving big gaps in coverage. Ashley will be working in the outpatient sector all month. Fortunately, an ER resident from the states started work today which will help with things in casualty.
Sarah helped one of our workers load about one hundred pounds of wood up onto here head to take home for firewood, which was amazing. We also had to let one of our workers be set to working only 2 instead of 5 days a week, which was difficult to do, but had to be done because there is just not enough work for 2 people here full time right now.
We are thankful for and love our friends and family back home. Pictures coming soon. The internet is slow tonight. Hopefully it will be up and running well before 3AM when the Clemson/FSU game will air here online. We hope you all had a great labor day weekend. God bless.