![\"kapuna_village-dock\"](\"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/53\/2015\/12\/kapuna_village-dock-e1451442936970.jpg\")
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Hey again (or as they say here, \u201cgoodnight!\u201d).\u00a0It\u2019s been awhile since I\u2019ve sent y\u2019all anything and I know that some of you are probably worried I\u2019ve gotten lost somewhere in the jungle or been picked off by a crocodile, but I\u2019m just fine. This electricity-only-after-dark thing really limits the email time. I\u2019ve been busy working at the hospital this week\u2026there have been a couple of babies born (!) and we make rounds to see patients at 7AM, 11, 4, and 9PM. It\u2019s raining right now and, being the wet season, rains at about 5PM every day\u2026otherwise it\u2019s consistently in the upper 90s with what I swear is 100% humidity. I\u2019ve figured out I\u2019m a lot tougher than I thought I was!<\/p>\n
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I\u2019m learning a lot about the way medicine is practiced here. Basically, when a family member gets sick, the family picks up and moves from their village to Kapuna. Sometimes they travel up to a day, by canoe or by foot, to get here. We have people of all ages just hanging out on the wards and it can get kind of crowded\u2026but it\u2019s neat seeing how families in this culture take care of each other. We unfortunately have a lot of sick little kiddies right now\u2026Dr. Lin says there\u2019s a diarrheal epidemic in this area. It\u2019s really scary to me how dehydrated some of them are\u2026their parents carry them around like limp little noodles and they hardly wake up. I therefore spent a lot of yesterday going to find bananas and giving the kids ORS (oral rehydration solution) because the parents are reluctant to do it when the baby is crying and I don\u2019t think really understand how important it is.<\/p>\n
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One of my favorite patients is an older man who came in to the hospital because he had jumped off a ladder on a nail. We took a look at his foot and saw that he had an awful infection\u2026it was swollen and you could see pus coming out of the hole where the nail had entered. Dr. Lin decided we needed to drain the abscess so we took him to the old operating suite. Our sterile equipment consisted of old latex gloves washed in disinfectant, and a scapel and forceps wrapped in an old towel. We drained an absolutely enormous amount of pus from his foot (don\u2019t worry, I have pictures) so I\u2019m hoping that helped to slow the infection. What is kind of frustrating to me is that we couldn\u2019t put him on the antibiotics he needed because the hospital just doesn\u2019t have them\u2026and those that are here are often expired or need to be rationed among the different patients. Apparently the government provides funds for the medicines, but they have to be shipped by boat up the river\u2026and the boat has supposedly \u201cbeen coming\u201d for three months. I\u2019ve learned that this is common in PNG\u2026 patience is key!<\/p>\n
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The patients here are really different than American patients in that they don\u2019t demand anything from us; they\u2019re just grateful for any care we are able to give them. I always ask them what they need before I leave the ward; one lady just wanted a green coconut (they\u2019re filled with this sweet-tasting water) and the man with the foot infection wanted books and magazines. Seriously\u2026he\u2019s a teacher. I took him a couple of books that I\u2019d brought with me and some that are on a bookshelf in our house and by the time I went back the next day he\u2019d already finished four!<\/p>\n
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One of the highlights of the afternoon was going on a run up the river to a neighboring village. Manar (the other visiting doc from England) is a big runner and runs everyday so I figure I should tag along every once in awhile. Anyways, the village kiddies think we\u2019re the funniest thing to hit Papua New Guinea when we do this, and have decided that it\u2019s great fun to run with us\u2026so we literally had 80 half-naked kids running barefoot behind us and giggling the entire time. I felt like Forrest Gump.<\/p>\n
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I also found out I\u2019m really going to be put to work in all kinds of ways while I\u2019m here\u2026which is great for me since we have a lot of breaks throughout the day (it\u2019s amazing how much free time a person has when you take away internet, cell phones, music, TV, the mall, etc). My newest task is to teach keyboard to some of the school kids! I said on the first day that I wanted to serve Kapuna in whatever ways they needed, so I\u2019m excited to be able to do just that.<\/p>\n
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Tonight Rita and Wendi, two of the staff nurses, came over to cook dinner with us (well, I watched them cook). They\u2019re hilarious and I was excited they wanted to hang out. Afterwards, we went to the office here and watched \u201cA Walk to Remember\u201d (great movie) with the rest of the nurses. Friday and Saturday nights are apparently video nights since there\u2019s no other source of entertainment.<\/p>\n
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The friendships and time I\u2019ve had to fellowship with the others here at Kapuna has been really great. The nurses and nursing students have devotionals on Monday and Friday mornings and it\u2019s great to hear them share what\u2019s on their hearts. I also have had some great conversations with Dr. Lin. In case I haven\u2019t mentioned it, she is an absolutely amazing (84-year-old) woman. She met her husband in medical school in New Zealand and afterwards, both feeling called to do mission work, moved to New Guinea. I can\u2019t imagine the boldness they must have both had since at that time many of the natives had never even seen a white person. Her husband passed away in the \u201880s and she\u2019s been working here since then. She has such an amazing heart for the people here and she\u2019s often running off to find bananas for the patients or giving them money to go buy food in the market. Matthew 25:40 says \u201c\u2026\u201d \u2018I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.\u2019\u201d I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve ever met a person who exemplifies this verse as she does. She told me that they\u2019ve really been struggling to find doctors to come work at the small gulf hospitals and one of Kapuna\u2019s sister hospitals, Kikori, hasn\u2019t had a doctor for quite some time because people will leave after a month or two. I understand this\u2026I think that leaving life as most of us know it and moving here would be more difficult than I can even now imagine\u2026but I pray that they do find someone called to this life.<\/p>\n
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Anyway that\u2019s all for tonight\u2026continue to write me if you want because I love getting your emails! Please continue to keep me in your prayers and God Bless y\u2019all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey again (or as they say here, \u201cgoodnight!\u201d).\u00a0It\u2019s been awhile since I\u2019ve sent y\u2019all anything and I know that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}