IN SEOUL

So far so good. I'm in Seoul right now. Just got here about an hour ago. 9 hours down only 18 hours of travelling to go (not counting layovers). I'm glad to be here, this leg of the trip should go a lot smoother. It was quite the adventure getting here. The ferry from Calapan to the main Philippine island was pretty rough. People were falling just trying to get into the boat. It calmed down after about 30 minutes. Then I had to take a bus to the capital city, Manila. That wouldn't have been so bad if the guy sitting next to me wasn't cuddling up to me in his sleep. Plus there were vendors hasseling us the whole time. Annemarie and I almost missed the bus stop. One of the staff members told us the name of the stop before we left, it actually had two names but we could only remember one. It wasn't the one the driver used. He stopped but since we didn't recognize the name of the place we didn't get off. I had a feeling we should have though so I went up and asked where the stop was. He started yelling and stopped on the highway to let us off. It was only about 10 metres away from a taxi so it wasn't too bad.
We got to the hotel alright, but I locked the keys to my suitcase inside my suitcase so I had to pick the lock with a hair pin. Annemarie is leaving tomorrow so she is staying the night. I got a taxi to the airport last night. It started off all wrong. He was going the wrong way down a one way street, so that was scary. Then he got a ticket for it and he was arguing with the cop while I was sitting there waiting to go to the airport. On top of that he was trying to set me up with his son. AWKWARD!
Anyway, I got to the airport alright and I'm now stuck here in Korea until tomorrow. I'm not in the same hotel as last time, which is disappointing because I was really looking forward to a heated toilet seat, after spending much of the last seven weeks squatting. Oh well, such is life.
I'm pretty tired so I'm going to head to bed. Goodnight!
Oh, by the way, you all should check out googleearth.com. It's a satelite thing and you can see your house online.

Today is my last day here in Calapan. Tomorrow I will be heading to Manila, where I will catch my plane. I'll be flying to Seoul where, I will be stuck for 37 hours. The airline booked me a hotel so I'll be able to sleep, but it will be boring there all by myself. I'll arrive in Edmonton on wednesday and home on thursday.
Since it is our last day here, we decided to get manicures and a foot spa since it only cost $5 for the two of them. The girl doing mine kept laughing because I am so pale. They all started calling me "CoffeeMate" (a cofee whitener). They also couldn't believe how many bug bite we had all over our feet and legs. It was a little awkward because everyone in the salon kept staring at us, but I survived! The funnest thing ever was when they started playing videoke on the TV and we all started singing along.
Anyway I gotta get home and start packing before church.
Can't wait to get home!

FINAL WEEK

We are in the final week of school here. Today was our last day of class, tomorrow will be our last day of outreach. Then friday we are going out for a graduation breakfast and supper.

The doctors who have been teaching us had to leave on the weekend so we had a fairwell dinner and kareoke night on Friday. They were both such wonderful fun people. It was hard to say goodbye to them but I feel so blessed to have met them. This is a picture of the students with the two docs.

Here is Annemarie and I singing "Wild Thing" together and Jez, one of the docs singing Michael Jacksons smooth criminal. It was hilarious.


We have a couple of other docs come in. We did dermatology for two days, and we had a surgeon come in to show us how to do stitching. Here is the practice banana that we did.

Matt let us practice on hime. He had couple of moles that we removed and stitched up. Here is me stitching...

Here is me after stitching...

I didn't actually faint but I was feeling a bit lightheaded. Apparently I looked pale, even my lips turned white. But in my defense we hadn't eaten for 6 hours, and it was super hot in the room. I didn't feel that bad but everyone insisted I lie down. It was pretty embarassing since I am the only one who plans on being a professional doctor. On top of that I had said just before we started that I was really excited about doing stitches because I am considering going into surgery. The doctor consoled me saying that most people in med school faint when they see their first surgery.

These pictures are from the sunday school that we do in Silonay on Sundays. The kids are so cute.

Apparently not all of the photos are loading. Sorry!

Thursday we got a last minute call from a tribal leader cancelling our outreach on Friday. We were all really disappointed because it was going to be a beautiful hike in the mountains, along side a river and some small waterfalls, and this was a very secluded tribe so they were really in need of some medical attention. I'm not sure why it was cancelled, but it all worked out in the end. Our director made some connections and we were able to set up in the local health clinic so we could serve some of the poor right around where we are living. Almost the entire community where we do weekly bible studies showed up. We got help all the kids that we sing songs and play games with. It was so cool because they all remember our names and came and sat on our laps. Us students did the doctoring by ourselves. The real doctors were there when we had questions but we diagnosed and prescribed all by ourselves. A lot of it was headaches, colds, and diarrhea so it wasn't to hard. I spent most of my time cleaning fungal and bacterial infections off the kids' scalp. It was so sad when one little girl had to cut her beautiful long black hair so it could be cleaned. We saw another malnurished baby. 9 weeks and only 3kg. Since she lives so close to us we will be able to help her quite easily. The mother was having difficulty breastfeeding so the baby was not getting enough milk. We gave her a bottle and some formula to feed the little girl and she will be coming by the base for weekly check ups until she is well.
Well, that's all for now. I gotta go and prepare a thirty minute sermon-like speech for tomorrow. I'm speaking at Silonay, one of the communities we do bible study and sunday school with.
Oh, one more tip if your ever in the Philippines. I got quite the shcok when I tried to call West Jet, 1-888-WEST-JET is not the right number. It will connect you to one of those "special" lines that you have to pay per minute, you know the adult only ones. Boy was my face red!

As I opened this page to start typing I was filled with joy, because I have so many wonderful things to say about Ryan. He is still gaining weight, and now he's even started to smile and laugh. He can sit up all by himself, when we first saw him he could barely even move. His skin no longer hangs off of his bones. He is really warming up to all of the staff and students, he's no longer afraid of white people and he is able to sleep peacefully now.
That joy has become mixed with sadness. Maria, the Mangyan caregiver had a stroke Sunday afternoon. Her grandfather was ill and she had gone home to see him when she collapsed .She just died in hospital. She was only 20 years old. She was such a sweet girl and was great with Ryan. We all got very close in the few days that she was with Mercy Link. The team here did everything they could for her, paid for all the medications and tests, and visited her a few times a day.
Please pray that Maria's family and tribe will not blame Mercy link for this. Death and illness is a punishment from the gods in Mangyan culture. They could think that Mercy Link is cursed and maybe even take Ryan away. Even though the stroke would have happened whether she had been with us or not, there is no way of proving that to the tribal leader. This is the second Mangyan woman since Mercy Link has started that has fallen seriously ill while working for at the base here.
Also pray for the students here. When things like this happen we are always left asking why. There has also been a lot of tenison in the house between some students. Just the regular frustrations of having roommates, being away from home and being sick. We have less than two weeks left, it would be a waste of the last five weeks if some of us left angry and unhappy.

HERE'S THE MISSING PICS

OUTREACH -- JULY 14

We had another great outreach yesterday. Nearly 200 patients. We had set up at the base of a mountain so that we would be more central and more tribes would be able to come seek help, but we ended up be swamped by the people from the nearest town. Many of them already had regular doctors and could afford their own medication. That was really frustrationg because it prevented us from seeing some of the people who really needed the help. We did our best, but we couldn't stay their all night. It got so crazy in the afternoon that Narelle and I were seeing patients without the supervision of any doctor. Aaaah! For the most part it went well, but there were quite a few problems that no one could do anything about. One women wanted medication to make her voice come back, she had lost it over 20 years ago. Another wanted sleeping pills but we don't give out anything that can become addictive.
We met another motherless family. This father was taking care of 6 children all under the age of 11. The grandmother tried to help but she was very ill. All the children had asthma. I patched up a 6yr old girl who had a nasty blister on her finger. It had popped and needed to be cleaned and bandaged. The poor little thing didn't shed a tear but was shaking when I put on hydrogen peroxide. It must have hurt so bad. We saw a 21yr old man who had had a stroke less than a year ago. He had the medications his mother could afford, but they were hoping we would have something that would bring back the function to his right side. He is pretty much destined for poverty because finding a job will be very difficult for him. The fun really started on the way home when the tire that was just repaired after last week had a bulge on it. We had no choice but to drive home in it, it was pretty dodgy driving through the rough terrain. Here we are all piled on the right side to relieve some of the pressure on the left tire...

The tire ended up blowing. It was the loudest sound ever. Some girls thought we were being shot at. It was pretty funny. It didn't blow until about five minutes away from where we live so it worked out quite well.
Here is the flat tire....

Here we are walking home...

After that we went to the local version of MacDonalds, called Jolly-Bee for icecream.

So I just sat here for 30 minutes and the pics didn't load so maybe next time.

I MEANT TO POST THIS LAST WESDNEDAY

Ryan, the malnurished boy from outreach, was brought to the hospital by his father on Saturday. We are so grateful they came. Most people don't come to the hospital because it is to expensive. Here you have to buy any medications, syringes, needles or sheets yourself and finding all these things is quite difficult. You even have to bring your own water. It's really sad but our director got the little guy everything he needed. The hospital did some tests, but nobody was around to care for Ryan or give Pauline (the director) the test results. So she brought him back to the base. It turns out he is actually two years old not 1. We are all really confused because we have recieved alot of contradicting information from some of the tribal women. The main thing is he is here now and will get help. The father was really upset and wanted to stay with ud for a little while, unfortunately he had to go back to work but he trusts the team here to make Ryan better.
He's still very unwell, when he first got here saturday night he was only 6kg, which is incredibly small for a 2 year old. But he has gained 1kg in the three days he has been here. He is much more awake then when we first got him and has started to eat on his own. The students are not allowed to get involved too much right now because white people are very scary and he will do better if as few people as possible are handling him and feeding him. The tribe chief came to check on the little guy and was shocked at the difference a few days of proper care had made.
Here is a picture of the little guy.

God totally had everything planned out before we got this little angel. Just a few weeks ago a girl from Sweden called Pauline saying she felt God wanted her to be a part of the staff here in Mindoro. Pauline didn't have a position for her but thought it would be the right thing to let her come. She arrived last wednesday, but had nothing to do here on the base. There was also a Mangyan caregiver(from a different tribe) who has been asking Pauline to join the staff for the last few months but she did not have the money to stay here. Pauline had kinda lost touch with her, but she was at the clinic we did on friday. When Pauline agreed to take Ryan she didn't know who would care for him but then remembered the Swedish girl. She was also able to get sponsors for the caregiver to come in so somebody from his own tribe could care for him. It was good for the students too because we had just learned how to diagnose and care for different kinds of malnutrition the day before outreach.

I also took pictures at some of the bible studies we have done the last few days. The kids were re-enacting the battle of Jehoshaphat. I think they got do wrapped up in the paper swords they missed the point of the story. Oh well, at least they had fun



How scared does this baby look. Us white folk get this look alot from the wee ones.

OOPS!

In the last post I wrote that the baby's mother died to years ago, which is impossible since the baby was 1 year old. What I meant was the mother died to months ago. Thanks for the correction Tina!

MANGYAN OUTREACH

Yesterday we did an outreach with one of the native tribes. It was so beautiful up there in the mountains. The hike was shorter than expected because we drove the bus a little farther than we should have up the narrow muddy path. We ended up getting stuck but some members of the tribe came and helped us push it out. I don't have any pictures because the batteries went dead on my camera, but hopefully I can snag some from somebody else.
It turned out to be a relatively short clinic, which was for the best since most of us were ill and the tribe didn't provide lunch. They did feed us these really weird bananas that were baked. They tasted exactly like potatoes, so it was a welcome change from rice.
I pulled some more teeth which was so much fun, still don't have the magic touch when it comes to injections, but what can you do. Hopefully pracice will make perfect! We saw mostly ear infections, which isn't overly exciting. The funniest thing was this women who had internal hemerhoids but refused to accept the diagnosis. The doctor kept explaining it to this woman but the woman kept telling the doctor she was wrong. We don't know what diagnosis she was looking for so we just gave her pain killers and vitamins.
We saw our first severely malnourished baby. He was just over a year old, and barely even awake. His eyes were clouding over because of a lack of vitamin A, and his skin was peeling off. His mother had died two years ago and the father didn't really care for the child. His aunt was the one who took care of him most of the time. He was given a glass of milk (the powdered stuff, no nutritional value) some mornings and that was it. We are also sure he has pneumonia and maybe TB. The baby needs to get to the hospital, but we couldn't take the baby without the father's consent. The father wouldn't be home from work until 9pm, so we talked the chief to convince him how sick the baby is. The chief wouldn't release him but said they would bring him into town the following day with the father. Please pray that he keeps his word. If the baby doesn't get to the hospital he will die. We gave him some vitamins, and paracetamol for his fever. We kept him in the clinic for a couple of hours and I fed him a rehydration solution. He perked up quite a bit and was able to hold the glass himself, he even ate some rice. But he is still in the danger zone and the tribe doesn't know how to care for him properly in his state. He needs to be hospitalized, but we did all we could do. I'm going to try to get to the hospital tonight to see if he is there.

Class to day was super fun. I got to pull some teeth! The hardest part was giving the anesthetic injection, pulling the teeth was pretty easy. I can't believe people are willing to be our practice patients. This wasn't an official outreach, we just went to the nearest community and asked if people would let us pull their teeth out. They needed to be pulled anyway, but there is no way I'd let somebody with no training pull my tooth.

Here are some pictures from our weekend off. This is the first phase of my sunburn before the shoulder tops burned. The sandcastle was built by some guy that morning. Every morning he builds a new sandcastle, it takes him nearly 8 hours.




Tomorrow we are going on outreach to one of the native tribes. It requires a one hour hike in the mountains. I'm really excited. Outreach is my favourite part of being here. But there is a small problem, a few of us might not be able to go. Some of us have caught a pretty serious case of "the ring of fire". And seeing as there is no bathroom there it would be extremely awkward for us. It could also be a health risk to them as they do not have proper waste disposal. Please pray that it will go away by tomorrow, we are quite unwell and the outreach was planned to include us. Ironically, we have prepared posters, a puppet show and a skit on how to prevent diarrhea.

BACK TO WORK

I got back yesterday from Borocay. I had a really good weekend off. We went snorkeling, parasailing and cave hiking. I got a wicked farmer tan (well, more of a burn despite the fact I put on sunscreen twice before going outside) though because I was wearing a t-shirt over my swimsuit. The next day I put on sunscreen only up to the burn so that my shoulders would burn and I would have a normal tan. Didn't work. The top part of my shoulder burnt, but not all the way to the previous burn line. So now my arms are burnt and my shoulders are burnt, but there is a blindingly white stripe seperating the two. Add to that the burn on my face is now starting to peel. I look like such a dufus.
Snorkeling was super fun, I saw heaps of Nemos and Dories. My mask was broken though so I kept getting salt water in my mouth and up my nose. When I first put the mask on I started to hyperventilate because it stops you from being able to breathe through your nose and I felt like I was suffocating. My lungs were sore the whole day. After about half an hour though I felt more comfortable. I think the guide thought I was looney. After snorkeling we went to a private beach for a while. Just as I jumped out of the boat a wave came in and knocked me feet out from under me, thus planting me firmly on my butt in the water. The guide and boat driver had a good laugh.
The most awkward moment of my life happened to me the next morning. I won't go into detail because I would rather forget the whole thing. I went for a swim early in the morning before the other girls woke up. There was some great waves coming in and I ended up finding some little Filapino kids to pla with for a bit. After being there for about 45 minutes this guy came over and started talking to me, it was no bug deal because he was gay so I didn't feel threatened. That is until he told me he was a bisexual, gave me his hotel and room number and told me to meet him back there at 8pm. Yikes! Not my favourite moment. Needless to say I didn't go anywhere alone that night.
Other than that things are going well. I can't wait until our next clinic on Friday, I absolutely love working with the people. It is frustrating though because we don't have the chance to follow up on the patients we see. So please pray that our one-time efforts will be sufficient to help them and also pray that we would make the right choices for treatment. It is difficult to know what to do with patients you know can only be helped with longterm care. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers