This Is Just How It Is

Good morning!

Greetings from the middle of nowhere (that would be Francia Sirpi)! Life is going pretty well, I'd say. Everything that bothered me, or was so different when I first got here, seems to be fading or becoming normal; so, I guess this is a good thing that my perspective is changing. :P

I realized that I'm getting used to living in Nicaragua when I opened the oatmeal bag in the morning and didn't even worry about trying to get rid of the ants before I dumped the oatmeal (and ants) in the boiling water. They probably give us some sort of vitamin we need here anyway.

If there's anything we haven't gotten careless about, it's food cleanliness. Pretty much EVERYTHING gets dipped in chlorine water including plates, utensils, cookware, fruits, and vegetables. Chelsea has even tried to chlorine rinse our beans and rice much to Jared's horror. He ran away from her with the bowl of cleaned rice yelling at her to quit her obsession, and she chased him with a bowl of chlorine water, insisting that "It needs to be sanitized." Like she says, "We're NOT getting sick this year." Good. I'm down with that. Amen to chlorine. Good job, Chelsea.

All of us have been VERY busy over the past several weeks now that we have all begun our "jobs". Now, in addition to figuring out this strange culture, we are also attempting to develop our under-qualified skills to fill our obviously necessary positions.

One morning last week, we climbed through the barbed wire fence and rounded the clinic to meet a large Miskito family that had walked a few days to get here and camped out on the front porch of the clinic waiting for us to show up. Behind the large group of people, I noticed someone lying motionless on the bench. The body was wrapped from head to toe in blankets - only his face poked out. I have never seen anyone look so pathetically sick before in my life. For a short second I actually thought he was a corpse. His eyes and skin were sunken in and his eyes were unfocused and glazed over. Georgina called us into another room and gravely told us that he had AIDS - "So be very careful," she told us. "Wear gloves, use alcohol." The poor guy was only in his early twenties, but he hadn't eaten in two weeks, we were told, and he was too weak to even move a finger. His family seemed to be desperately looking to us for any signs of hope, but there weren't any. Georgina told us we needed to transfer to Waspam - or else the young man wouldn't live through the night. One half hour later, we carried the emaciated man down to the ambulance and loaded him in. Georgina climbed in as well to accompany him to Waspam and promptly instructed us to run the clinic while she was gone.

This was only our third day working in the clinic and honestly we were scared out of our minds! We needed to listen to symptoms, diagnose the person, and perscribe medicine! Isn't that super-illegal for two medical novices to do if they were in America?? I mean, Jerrica is a registered nurse, but even she admits that RN training does NOT prepare you for jungle nursing. We decided to pray right on the spot for guidance to make the right diagnoses. Luckily most of our patients spoke some Spanish and for the ones who didn't I would go find someone who DID speak Spanish and Miskito and drag them in to translate for me. Luckily, they were all pretty agreeable. After each patient we continued to pray together and God really came through. The rest of the day flew by and we had our smoothest day yet! Praise God!

I've figured out pretty quickly that I can still freak out around these poeple, but as long as I keep my voice in a monotone, they have no clue. All this clinical stuff is pretty new to me. Even though I'm paranoid to RECEIVE shots, I still don't really enjoy stabbing other people with needles. I feel bad when they cringe, or when their skin is so leathery we have to literally shove the needle with both hands to sink it in. Pretty much I'm always freaking out to Jericca, about how we have like 20 people standing in the windows and doors watching us and giggling, or if the needle gets clogged when I'm giving an injection, or if I accidentally touch blood and think I'm going to get AIDS (.....Hey, I think that's a legitimate fear here....). Thankfully she puts up with all my medical ignorance/self-consciousness, and believes that one day I'll be able to be "fearless with the needle". Haha

Also I had another crazy experience a little later in the week. One day after work, Georgina sent a messenger up the hill to have us come and help her deliver a baby! I still can't believe it! Honestly, I don't think I was much of a help. Georgina would tell me stuff to do but I'm pretty clueless about everything that has to do with childbirth. My cluelessness also might have been a result of my complete state of awe. I had a million different thoughts running through my head all at the same time - mostly consisting of "There is no way THAT is going to fit through THAT" and "I can't believe this is happening!" and "This must really suck!" and "This must be the worst experience ever." Oh my word! It looked so painful! Jerrica kept on telling me to stop cringing. When the baby finally popped out, suddenly we were all caught up in a flurry of activities - grabbing gauze, wrapping the baby in sheets, getting the unbilical clamp, cleaning the baby's face and checking it's respirations. Georgina snapped on the clamp and ordered ME to cut the cord. I understood what she said, but I asked again - just because I think it's such a crazy thing to do - I always thought that's what the daddy does! WEll, I cut through it and amid the chaos going on, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the whole experience. It was the most horrific and the most beautiful thing I think I've ever seen. It was amazing to see this precious infant take her first breath. This child has so much to learn and so much to suffer, and even in this secluded part of the world, God still has his own purpose in bringing her into the world. So cool.

We've had many other adventures so far such as cutting grass with machetes, meeting our first poisonous snake, having my daily devotions in my hammock, being a prayer meeting translator, getting chewed on daily by millions of little Nicaraguan beeltes, taking showers in a rain storm, stomping on tarantulas, making bread, and using an entire tube of anti-itch cream within one week. Goodtimes? I don't even know. This is just how it is.