The Road to Gimbie Letters

05/24/02

Dear Family and Friends,

This has been a time of transitions at our hospital. I will mention the sad parts first. Our accountant, who has been the hospital accountant for many years, died this past week. He had been ill, but no one expected it to happen, least of all his wife. She was away at the school of her children who are in college so, sadly, the man was not with any family when he died. There were a lot of hospital staff there, though, and at times our hospital is like a family. It must be understood that in this part of Ethiopia, as is the case in many places, when a person dies, it is hoped that he will be with his family. We will miss him.

Our other sad case was not unexpected. The husband of one of the women who works in our hospital died this past week as well. I had taken care of him some months ago and had not seen him for a while, perhaps four or five months. The day after I arrived back in Gimbie, the wife came to me and told me he was sick, so I went to make a house call. When I came into the room, I realized that he did not have a long time to live. He had lost weight and he did not recognize me at first until his wife said my name. He had been calling for me for weeks. When he heard my name, he shook my hand and seemed to have a few brief moments of lucid thought, smiling, he asked how I was doing. I told his wife the only thing for us to do was to give comfort measures, which we did. I am glad that I visited him, because he died the next morning, with his family at his side.

On to some much more happy transitions. We had a population explosion this past week. It seemed as though the women had synchronized their biological clocks for delivery. Sadly, every one of them had some kind of obstetrical complication when they arrived at the hospital. Three of them had arrived with dead fetuses, one of them with a ruptured uterus. The rest were alive, but in some kind of trouble. We had a host of c-sections, and all of the live babies made it, thank God. To add to the interest, our anesthetist was in Addis the whole week, so I was able to rapidly brush up on my anesthesia on the job. My guardian angel kept me out of trouble with all the cases. Besides the fetal deaths, the ruptured uterus, we also had a pre-eclamptic (a bad condition in which the mom's blood pressure goes up and a number of things happen to mom and baby; the condition can be fatal); a number of stuck babies, where baby's head was bigger than the path out of mom's womb; a few unusual presentations, such as baby's arm up by the head, and baby face up with the chin being the first thing that came out. When we finally did have a normal delivery, after all the others, I didn't know what to do. The nurse handled it by herself, and I just stood aside and wondered what to do.

We have also had a week of meningitis, at least 5 or 6 cases, all from the same area. We also had a case of relapsing fever that is spread by lice. He is 16 and his older sister was helping to take care of him in the hospital. We got rid of his lice and told the sister she needed to wash all of her clothes to get rid of hers. Sadly, she didn't listen. The boy got better, and now she is in the hospital with relapsing fever. I gave a stern talking to the rest of the family today and told them all to wash or we would be seeing them in the hospital next week. I hope they listen. We even let them use our laundry to wash their clothes.

Finally, we are having the run up to the new hospital wing dedication in August. Lots to do, but the building is taking shape. I haven't been able to get connected at a fast enough modem rate to send pictures yet, but for those of you who want to check, now and then, I will try to send the pictures to the following web site where you can check it out at your own leisure: http://www.peaceful-river.com/gimbie

Sincerely in Christ,

Nick, Phosfe, Christopher and Ian Walters