Gavin was in charge of taking us to church this morning. There were Laura, Evan, Vicki, Nadine, Amy, and Steve, who is here for a week to work on some projects with the radio station.Gavin had been up very early this morning because he had been called in to the clinic because a 10-year old girl was having a sickle cell crisis. He had relieved her symptoms and she was resting at the clinic when we left for church. A few minutes after, Gavin got a call from the mother of the girl saying she was in pain again, so we turned around to go back to the clinic.
Gavin and Amy rushed into the clinic while the rest of us waited outside. I didn't want to bother them, but I got concerned about what was happening, so I carefully went in. I watched Gavin and Amy as they started an IV and tried to calm her down.
A few minutes later the girl's father came in. While Gavin was out of the room looking for something, the father asked me, "Doc, in your opinion, do you think there's a cure for this?" All of a sudden I felt a huge weight on my shoulders, as if I had to deliver a bad news. I almost choked, but said in broken Creole, "Well, Gavin is the doctor, so he would know better than me, but this is a genetic disorder so..." The father understood what I wanted to say, and he responded, "But we can control the pain, yes?" "Yes, we can," I replied, and he accepted my answer.
It seems that the father had already heard that there is no cure for his daughter's disease, but I felt awful to think that I might be the one to tell him there's no real hope. I had learned about sickle cell anemia many times probably since elementary school, but actually seeing how it affected the girl and her family had a profound impact on me. It made me realize how serious the disease is, and that the people suffering from them are not just numbers in statistics.
Gavin and Amy were able to calm her down after a few minutes, and we let the family stay in the clinic with her while we went to church. Since we were running late for church, Gavin decided to go to the church next to the OMS compound. We used a little portable audio system so Gavin could translate into a mic and we could listen to him through an earphone. He started to translate for a bit, but he left in the middle because he was called by the girl's parents again. I could only catch a few phrases because they talked so fast, so I couldn't translate. I need to practice listening more.
After the service, we went to Christoph Hotel as we usually have lunch there on Sundays. We took a dip in the pool afterwards. We did a few cannonball dives, and Laura and I threw Nadine and Gavin in the air like we did last time when we were at Christoph.
Later in the afternoon, we went to English Bible Fellowship, which is held at the Radio 4VEH station every Sunday at 4:00PM. There were a few short-term mission teams with different mission organizations. It was cool to see them and to be able to worship together in English.
On Sundays we are on our own for dinner, which just means that we don't have a cook to prepare us food or wash dishes, but they make pasta salad or something we can heat up in advance. We also don't have a long-term missionaries scheduled to join us, but Amy joined us for dinner tonight, just because she can.Afterwards, we hung out in Vicki and Nadine's room as they packed their bags because they are leaving tomorrow. We watched the rest of Chaos Theory, which had a pretty good ending. It's going to be so sad to see the two leave tomorrow morning.
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