{ooops…wrote this our last week in Kibuye – and didn’t get around to posting it.}
One of the strange things about this team is that although we are in the least medically served country in the world (Canada & USA have a physician for every ~340 people, rural Burundi has 1 physician for ~40,000 people), living in the middle of a district with hundreds of thousands of people served only by our hospital – our family actually gets really good medical care.
Incredible medical care in many ways.
Take for example …. a few days ago
Micah was on a swing with a little kid on his lap. Honestly the two of them probably weigh 150lbs together – and plenty of adults have used that swing. It’s not one of the janky homemade ones that have broken, or one held up with what our family calls ‘goat rope’ – that’s frayed and snapped. This was a legit swing. One of the straps holding the swing to the tree branch broke, gravity did what it does best, pulling them and the previously secured chain towards the hard clay earth. The chain (we think) hit Micah right in the face, on the eye really.
Micah walked into the house with his hand over his eye, blood trickling out from between his fingers… Didn’t look good. I ran outside and within 30 seconds we had a surgeon in our house looking at him, and a few minutes later we were in one of the best eye clinics in the country, having a well-trained clinical officer giving him a full evaluation with equipment that only exists in a few places in the country. Plus we had our personal surgeon there with us.
There was the time Jonah fell into a ditch and broke his arm. He fell – we looked up and within 30 seconds we had three doctors there.
There was the time Matea fell and gashed open her leg at the waterfalls. We raced home in the LandCruiser – and had two doctors when we got home -one of whom then sutured shut the wound right there in our house. Of course -that was also the time the hospital was out lidocaine – so she had deep stiches in her leg with ‘take a deep breath’ as the only numbing/freezing agent.
There was the time I had {still not sure – was either Chikungunya or Dengue Fever } and had multiple doctors coming to check on me daily.
Having a team of private physicians take care of me the day after our attack – a surgeon to look at the stab wound, an Internal Medicine doc, and an anesthesiologist monitoring my fluids, and IV antibiotics.
I could go on and on…but really it would just make it sound like we’re really accident-prone. This is clearly NOT true at all.
So yes – while we lived in a rural isolated village in the middle of the country with least doctors per capita in the world – we were pretty incredibly taken care of.
The thought of having to find a doctor – and go to them – and they aren’t already friend/teammate/neighbor/aunt/uncle is actually a bit daunting.
Feel free to comment….