Less than 6 months to go!!!

So sorry to everyone that I have not posted photos in a while. I lent my camera to a local person who asked me for it.
I have my camera back and will start taking photos as soon as it is charged.
My promise here as a Volunteer with CMMB ends April 2016. So please pray for me that my next step is whatever God calls me to do.
Many of you know that I love to travel and do volunteer work. As a Lay Missionary with the Propagation of the Faith it is my vocation and pleasure to do so.
I do not want to arrive at the end of my life and not have done as much as I can for my fellow human beings especially the "least" among us.
When I was 15 my father gave me a photocopy with a beautiful poem. It stated that any good we can do, DO IT NOW because we only pass this way but once.
Sometimes the good is staying where we are. Sometimes it is going someplace else. Sometimes it is opening our hearts, sometimes it is giving up our hearts for the greater good and for GOD.
In the 6 months I have been here we have done so much. Saved so many Mother's and Women's and Infant's lives.
We (The CMMB Safe Motherhood Team which consists of me and a nurse/ midwife who is sometimes called away) have heroically operated in an Operating Room or Theater as it is called here that has NO electricity, NO lights, NO water, NO operating table, NO anesthetist, NO general anesthesia, we perform all our surgeries with Ketamine. The theater attendants from the government do not know the names of the instruments so we have to point and I have tried to teach them some names. There is no NG tubes or OG to deflate the stomach while we operate. The sutures are not the correct type. The instruments are very old and rusty.
But we forge ahead.
So much can be accomplished with so little.
The other day my parish priest Fr. Jacinto helped me so much. During confession I was telling him that my greatest sin is pride. I feel so angered sometimes when I say something and a person with an 8th grade education or worse someone who does not know how to read or write tries to correct me or questions me.
He made the solution so easy. "Rachael, we follow Jesus Christ who was the Son of God and was sent to this earth and had to put up with Pharisees and High Priests and His fellow country people who were such critics. Remember this."
Wow!!!
What a way to remind me!!
Please pray for me and my next 6 months here.

Trust me I really am a Doctor!!

So remember the woman who had cervical cancer that I operated on?
Well, she was doing so well postoperatively. She met all her post-op goals (urinating, passing gas, eating and walking) by post-op day number 2. Wonderful!!!
Her wound on post-op day number 7 had a little purulent discharge and had a small seroma under neath it so I opened the skin which easily opened. Then for the next 3 days I personally packed and dressed the wound and it was looking so very good.
Then, the husband (who is a nurse by the way) on the third day of dressing changes decided that the wound should be closed and asked the Theater Attendant (O.R. Tech) to close the wound. So this man with an 8th grade education who did a 6 month Theater Attendant class with MSF (Doctors without Borders) waited until I was at Mass early in the morning and took the woman to the Theater (O.R.) and closed the wound with very close and very tight and very deep sutures!!!!
When I arrived after Mass at 8:30 am, one of the clinical officers (like a Nurse Practitioner) informed me that did I know that the Theater attendant had done this?
Of course I was furious!!! I went to see the patient, she was moaning in pain.
To make a LONG and CRAZY story short, the 8th grader/theater attendant felt that I did not know that to make wounds heal you need to close them!!! The husband also felt that  I was wrong and should have re-closed the wound.
I patiently explained to EVERY ONE  involved that when a wound is infected we must open it and then dress it every day and let it heal by secondary intention.
Of course in this case it is difficult to be humble, and kind and compassionate. I felt like screaming did they not know I AM A BOARD CERTIFIED OBSTETRICIAN AND GYNECOLOGIST!!! But I swallowed my pride and calmly tried to convince them to re-open the wound. They refused.  I called the nun Doctor who referred the patient to me as the husband works in her hospital. She stated what can we do? I know what can I do?
The CMMB staff supported me and the government staff also to try to convince them to re-open the wound.
We had a meeting with the Theater attendant and he thanked me for all I that I do to teach him but that I should have not abruptly gone in his "office" and corrected him.
Again I swallowed my pride and hoping to help the patient I explained the science behind wound healing and packing wounds.
He stated next time take him aside because that is not professional to correct him in public, so I explained that I was shocked that he had touched my patient because professional courtesy is to NOT touch another surgeon's patient!!!
So that was Friday.
They refused to let me re-open the wound all weekend.
Today on my walk, a man stopped me to tell me that that woman is NOT doing well, her wound is red and swollen. That she is very sick.
I explained that they refused to follow my advice and went to the 8th grade/OR tech for care. The man said to me, "Why, you are the REAL Doctor?".
I know my friend, I know.
How sad, after working so hard during the surgery and she did so well after for her to die for a STUPID wound infection!!!
I was thinking, maybe I should have screamed and yelled and thrown things, and been rude and maybe this woman will live. At the time, I felt being kind, compassionate and calm would be better, but now I do not know, maybe being rude, loud and uncaring to the 8th grade/theater attendant maybe would have saved the woman.....
I do not know......
Please pray that the Lord gives me patience.
Today is my 6 month anniversary here.
6 more months to go.
We give you thanks Almighty God for this and all your benefits, you who lives and reigns forever and ever, AMEN.