This is a story helplessness. I saw a young man in the ER two days ago. He had had a fever and headache for three weeks. Based on some clinical findings that don’t matter to this story we admitted looking at meningitis (infection in his spinal fluid) or endocarditis (infection in his heart) as possible diagnoses. Meningitis we ruled out by looking at his spinal fluid in the lab which left us with endocarditis or something else. If we were in the US we would do an echocardiogram and blood cultures to decide if he had endocarditis, here we can’t do either. Our diagnostic capabilities when it come to lab and radiology are very limited. So we put him on antibiotics and waited to see what happened next.
Tonight I am on call and my second call was about this young man. He was more restless than usual. After examining him, the doctor with me realized he wasn’t moving his right side. He had had a stroke. Probably an embolism from his heart, probably endocarditis. We still don’t know for sure, probably never will. More antibiotics. We’ll see what happens next.
But now, the difference between helplessness and hopelessness. We also prayed for this young man while we were there. Only God knows if he will recover and only God can make him better. So here in PNG we try not to think about what we can’t do, at times that could be overwhelming. We do what we can do and know that God is in control. There is both hope and peace in that.