Reality Check

It was an adventure.  A graphic adventure, I might add.  It began around 9:30 AM when I walked into the maternity waiting room.  I have never seen so many pregnant women in my life.  Fat stomachs, tired faces, and countless children clinging to their mothers sides.  I am taken upstairs in order to find Dr. Montano, one of the OBGYN's here in Cochabamba.  Once we find him, I follow him around the hallway for a few minutes while people stop him to ask questions.  He walks through a door and returns within minutes with a face mask, a hair net, and booties.  I know what this means.  My heart speeds up.  What will it be?  Surgery?  Patient care?  ICU?  He walks me to the dressing room and says that the head nurse will come get me in a few minutes.  I walk inside and find two nurses changing and a young girl in jeans and a sweater sitting on the dressing room bench.  The nurses look at me, and I look back at them.  We exchange a smile and a greeting, and they go back to getting ready.  Once I get my stuff on, I study the room a bit, and I focus on the young girl.  The one on the bench.  Within seconds, I notice the baby that is nursing underneath her jacket.  I ask how old her baby is- 2 weeks.  I ask how old she is- 16.  The minutes begin to pass as I sit and wait for someone to come get me.  Various nurses pass through and grab something from their locker or change into different scrubs.  Two nurses come in for the girl and she unzips her jacket to reveal the smallest baby I have ever seen.  Its skin is dark and wrinkled.  Its body is fragile and small.  The nurses take the baby out of the room for a few minutes, and I ask the girl how far along she was when her baby was born.  She was 6 months.  This explained the delicate state that the baby was in.  A nurse comes back to get the girl, and I am left alone in the dressing room.  The door opens, and Dr. Montano is on the other side, telling me to come in.  My heart begins to race again.  This is it.  I'm about to have some kind of life-changing medical experience.  As we walk through the hallway, my pride begins to rise...  "I am with THE doctor.  I bet all of these nurses and residents think I'm a major hot shot from America.  I'm here to solve all of their medical mysteries."  We walk through a set of doors and directly in front of me are two legs.  Wide open.  Ready to give birth.  My heart stops and my excitement rises.  This is it.  I'm about to watch my first birth!  Dr. Montano motions to another door and I following him through, assuming we are going to a different area of the operating room in order to get a better view.  Because of course, I deserve the best experience they could offer, right?! WRONG.  We walk out of the operating room and straight into a lovely volunteers office.  Surely we are just passing through, right?! Wrong again!  The doctor introduces me to the three ladies inside and without hesitation, they pull up a chair for me at their table.  Dr. Montano assures me that I will really enjoy working with these ladies, and walks out the door.  As I watch him leave, I feel my hope and excitement leave with him.  I walk over to my chair and sit down as the lady beside me shows me what to do.  And then we sit, and we fold gauze, and we sit, and we fold more gauze.  Don't worry, we won't run out! We have piles and piles waiting to be folded.  As I sit there and stare at the white rectangular sheet in front of me, I get a little frustrated.  I didn't come here to fold gauze! I came to see blood and guts... "Don't they know that I am basically a doctor? Don't they know that I have countless years of medical experience that have prepared me for this?  I could practically do the surgery myself!!" And as I sat there and thought of thousands of reasons that I deserved to be in the operating room doing something better than this, The Lord hit me over the head with my own pride.  He brought to mind 1 Corinthians 10:31... "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." Who am I to think that I deserve better?  Who am I to think that they should've given me something more interesting or more breathtaking?  I am more helpful folding gauze than I would be standing in a corner in the operating room!  As I continue folding, I imagine the patients that this piece of fabric will be used on.  I wonder what is wrong with them... How serious it is... I begin to pray for the people that will encounter these small rectangular clumps that seemed so meaningless to me.  Suddenly, I am joyful in my task.  I am glad to be helping in a way that seems so insignificant.  A volunteer comes in to tell us that it is time for the morning break, and I walk into a small room of about eight nurses and two doctors.  We sit and enjoy coca-cola and saltenas, and the daily hospital gossip is passed around the table.  After a few minutes, I feel a tap on my shoulder, and I turn around to find the head nurse motioning for me to follow her.  I jump up as I hear her say one simple word... my favorite word..."quirofano"... Operating room.  We walk straight into a C-section, and my excitement hits the roof.  Once I have a few minutes to get over my medical-high, I look around the room and begin to take it all in.  On the table in front of me lies a woman with her stomach wide open.  Beside her is a nurse texting away on her smart phone.  In the corner are two nurses having a conversation of their own.  My concentration is broken as the operating room door swings open, and a nurse walks through with a new born from next door.  In one door, out the other, and she is gone just as suddenly as she came.  I follow her through the door, hoping it will lead me to other new borns.  Sure enough, it did.  I walk into a room of 5 babies, each with name tags that reveal their time of birth being only minutes before I stood there with them.  I begin to get emotional.  I am standing before God's most precious creation.  These babies are beautiful.  A few of them are crying, but not for the same reasons we cry.  They have never felt pain.  They have never been hurt.  They have never endured a heart break.  They are sweet, tender, and delicate.  They are completely unaware that they are a beautiful, unique creation, or that The Lord of the universe longs for a relationship with them.  "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb"(Psalm 139:13).  I wonder about these babies futures.  I wonder what they will hold.  I pray that they find The Lord and that they have lives that are as beautiful as they are.  I am pulled out of my emotional trance when Dr. Montano walks in to talk to me.  He asks if I have been to see the mothers.  Confused, I shake my head from side to side, and follow him down the hall once again.  We walk into a room that is smaller than my bedroom to find eleven cots, each with a mother and her new born baby.  We walk to the next room, even smaller than the first, and find eight women in labor, waiting for their child to enter the world.  Dr. Montano points to the woman in the corner- the only one whose belly is not bulging out uncomfortably far.  "She's bleeding from her abortion" he tells me.  My heart shatters.  Before I have time to process the thought, we are on the way back to the eleven cot motel.  On the way there, he shows me the "delivery rooms".  Hospital beds lined down one side of the hallway with a curtain separating each one.  The curtain is the delivery room wall, and a door does not exist.  With my thoughts racing, I walk up to a bed and talk to a woman who is holding her new born.  He was born at 9:26 PM.  He is hardly a day old.  Dr. Montano leaves me for surgery and I stand there and watch while the nurses go from cot to cot, cleaning the women, and making sure they are doing okay.  I stand here in the doorway for about twenty minutes, observing the seemingly calm chaos.  I think of the woman bleeding in the room next door.  I look at each woman in front of me and wonder about the life they live.  I wonder what their house looks like.  I wonder how their family works.  I look at the women who's faces are stained with excessive sun and hard work.  I wonder how they will pay for this baby.  How will they feed it?  How will it survive?  My thoughts begin to overwhelm me, and I decide that I am done for today.  I wave goodbye to the women and walk down the dark hallway back to the dressing room.  I take my booties off and pull my mask underneath my chin.  Only a few hours earlier I stood in this room prepared to save the world... Now I sat in the same room, feeling completely overwhelmed, and very aware of my lack of superhero skills.  I leave the room and walk through the hospital, drawing eyes from those who think I am a nurse or doctor.  I keep my head down to lower the chances of anyone asking me something that I would not be able to answer.  I walk through the waiting room and out the emergency room doors.  As they shut behind me, I feel my breath rush into my lungs, as if I have been holding it this entire time.  I walk back to the burn center with my thoughts still running circles in my head.  I am overwhelmed, confused, and thankful.  Thankful that I met the 16 year old mother.  Thankful that I got to fold gauze.  Thankful that I got to see such a precious thing as the gift of life unfold right before my eyes.  I am thankful that I serve a God that is so much bigger than poverty and sickness.  Thankful that my God wants a relationship with me... that he is JEALOUS for me!  I think back to each of the babies that I encountered throughout the morning, and I am not nervous for their future anymore.  They are children of a King who loves unconditionally and whose grace is as abounding as the oceans.  A God who never leaves us or forsakes us.  I think of each of those children, and I find joy.  No matter what their situation, no matter what their future holds, they have a father who wants to wrap them in his warm embrace, and whisper to them, "You are mine."

Deja Vu

I forgot what it was like... The smells- a hospital, infection, poverty.  The sights- dirty garments, rotten teeth, open wounds.  The sounds- nurses talking, a little laughter, but mostly crying.  Crying for their parents... Crying to stop the pain... Crying to be noticed... Crying to be loved.  I forgot what it was like to walk into a hospital room of beautiful children and feel completely helpless.  I can't bring their families back. I can't stop the pain.  I can't save them.  I can only hold their hand and smile at them and hope that that is enough.
I've spent the last three days with some of the most beautiful children you could ever meet.  Their laughter is contagious when you know how much easier it would be to cry.  Their smiles warm your heart when you know how much pain they are having to push through.  Their eyes sparkle so brightly, but you never really know if it's just leftover from their tears... Yesterday I sat with a little girl named Maria Belen as she screamed over and over again for her mom and dad.  Most of the kids here have been abandoned by their parents.  A burned child is a lot of responsibility.  They cost a lot of money and they take up a lot of time between hospital visits and doctors appointments.  Across the room was Jhon Mishel.  He is probably about 7 or 8, and he is hooked up to a heart monitor and getting oxygen every few minutes.  I came back to his room later and he was watching cartoons and smiling at his nurse while she made jokes and talked to him.  Maria Belen and Jhon Mishel are both in the third room.  Categorically, the worst room- other than the ICU.  Because this room is filled with kids in the most critical condition, it is normally filled with a good number of nurses and doctors.  In order to stay out of the way, we spend most of our time in the first room.
The first room, you could say, is the happiest.  We've made three very good friends in there... Erika, Jhonatan, and Juan Gabriel.  Erika is the queen of the hospital.  She is burned on the side of her face and her arm, so her ability to run around and cause trouble has not been hindered at all.  She is always smiling and makes sure that the other kids are being taken care of.  Juan Gabriel loves to snuggle and hold your hand.  His injuries are mostly scars now, so he is free to run around as he pleases.  Jhonatan is the worst of the three.  He has open burns from his lower back to his feet, so he has to lay on his stomach at all times.  At first, he didn't talk very much, but now he is a nonstop chatter box.  Juan Gabriel and Erika bring their toys over to his bedside so that he can play with them.  They are the three amigos.
Spending time with these kids stirs up so many emotions inside of me, and most of the time, I am battling on the inside.  We are playing games and having a blast and I'm laughing alongside my little buddies, but then I step back into reality.  I look at their sweet faces and wonder what will happen to them.  I watch Erika as she laughs and brings so much joy to the patients and the staff. I'm amazed at her ability to keep a smile on her face...  An honest smile.  She talks about her parents and her family, but I have to wonder how long its been since she has seen them.  I watch cartoons with Juan Gabriel and he lays his head against my shoulder and smiles at me so sweetly.  I find him walking down the hallway, and before I know it, our hands are intertwined.  I wonder when was the last time that someone loved him like this... When will be the next?  And Jhonatan... My dear, sweet Jhonatan.  He lays on his stomach and turns his head as far as he can in order to be involved with every moment.  I stand by his bed and we play with toy trucks and he smiles from ear to ear.  Will someone else play with him like this?  Is there a toy truck waiting for him at home?  Is there a home?  These questions run through my mind at lightning speed as I walk the white tile hallway.  I look through the glass at a room full of children, and I see a room that brings me endless joy and breaks my heart in the exact same instant.  At the end of the day when I walk out the door, Erika peaks around the corner and screams "Chao!!".  In this moment, I decide that it's okay.  It's okay that I can't make it all better...  It's okay that I can't give them the world...  It's okay that I can't save them.  I can hold their hand and I can smile, and for now, that is enough.