Thursday, July 26, 2007

Each Heart Knows It's Own Bitterness

What do you do when there are three patients who need a ventilator, and your little hospital in the jungle only has two ventilators? You pray, you put the intern and resident to work ventilating by hand the patient most likely to die, and in a sad way, you hope that the sickest one passes to his final destination before the poor intern and resident stay up all night trying to keep alive a man who lost his pancreas.

What happened to his pancreas? It died. It was dead and black, except for the areas that were filled with abscesses. He survived about a month with a dying pancreas, but he passed away tonight. We went way beyond the call. He came in near death. We saw that he had air in the parts of his abdomen that should not have had air. He was taken to the operating room with the understanding might die during the surgery, but the surgery represented his only hope, as slim as his hope was. When the surgeon found that there was dead tissue and pus where his pancreas should have been, he closed the man's abdomen and took him back to his room.

As soon as the man returned to his hospital room after the "open and close" surgery, his heart stopped. After three minutes of work and medicines, his heart started again. The resident and intern did the work of a breathing machine for about 30 minutes until he started breathing again, but 2 hours later, his heart stopped and did not start again. His wife did nothing for about five minutes, then she started to cry and cry and cry without ceasing.

King Solomon wrote in the book of Proverbs:
Each heart knows its own bitterness,
and no one else can share its joy. (Proverb 14:10)


The husband and wife and their two sons had many moments of joy in their lives together, and everyone's life ends in sadness for those left behind. Tonight the couple's life together ended. She and the boys will know bitterness for a while, and loss forever, but they will have many moments of joy in the future.

After seeing a number of deaths here on the edge of the jungle, I think that we should work at making more joyful moments and work at remembering them more. Bitterness comes pretty easily; joy takes some work.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Malawi, Here We Come

Our son Andrew will finish eighth grade in June 2008. After that date, we will need to look for other ways to educate our children.

We took a trip to Malawi in April. We liked it a lot. We prayed and were convinced that God wants us to go to Malawi. There is a clinic there called Partners in Hope founded by Dr. Perry Jansen. The needs are huge, but God is alive there.

The life expectancy at birth in Malawi is 37 years. 1 in 4 children die by age 5. 15% of adults and 30% of the population is HIV positive. One half of a million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. There are 2 doctors per 100,000 Malawians. That is 1% of the rate in the United States. There is a joke, that is half funny and half true that there are more Malawian doctors in England than is Malawi.

We pray we will make a difference.

Blessings,
Jerry for the Koleski family