"I was made for more!" How that resonates in my heart! I was made for more than m&m's and chocolate chip cookies. My heavenly Father loves me and He made me for more than over-eating and indulging. And it's by His strength I can make wise and healthy choices for "I AM made for more!" To God be the glory!
What resounded with me today was this quote, "I steadfastly refused to even consider giving up my daily brownie." Because you see, I have been steadfastly refusing to even consider giving up my daily dose of m&m's. But I am working to change my mindset - to understanding that knowing God better is worth all the effort and sacrifice that a healthy eating journey requires
Reading Day 1 of my "Made to Crave 21 Day Challenge" today, I was challenged by the fact that I turn to chocolate when I'm happy and when I'm sad, to celebrate and to commiserate. Chocolate had become my comfort and my deliverer. It's time in my life to turn to God and away from chocolate.
. . . from my MRI and I must say, I am quite happy with them! First of all, my meniscus is just fine. I won't be having surgery on it any time in the near future! Unfortunately, there is still pain in the knee, the cause of which is arthritis. I found it amazing how obvious the arthritis was on my MRI. Even my uneducated eye could spot it! So I'm off to physical therapy to learn stretching and strengthening exercises to help me cope with and overcome the pain. Someday, we may be talking knee replacement . . . hopefully twenty years down the road!
Another amazing story from the good ship Mercy in Madagascar reblogged from "Through My Porthole" . . .
Just a couple of years ago, Ebenezar from The Congo was the first
patient we knew of that found Mercy Ships – and a way for his huge
facial tumour to be removed for free – via the internet. Last field
service, Cindy and about 20% of our Malagasy patients found us – and
their healing – through Facebook! I find that leap totally mind-blowing.
Feno found healing for her daughter on Facebook! (Pic: Katie Keegan)
Feno told me she had been really worried about Cindy. When her
daughter was just a year old she had pulling a kettle of boiling water
onto her leg and the third-degree burns caused terrible, painful
scarring as they healed. When Cindy eventually learned to walk, it was
more of a hobble as the scar contractures prevented her right big toe
from functioning (A big toe is one of those body parts we seem to ignore
until it doesn’t work!).
Feno heard that Mercy Ships (MS) had come to Madgascar and was
offering surgeries that could heal Cindy, but she really didn’t know if
she could believe it. A free operation seemed to good to be true, so she
decided to dig a little. Feno figured she could get the inside scoop on
anything via Facebook. So she found the MS Madagascar page and started
scrolling. She looked at the ‘before and after’ photos and a video of a little girl whose bent legs were healed.
Then she read the comments other Malagasy were making about their
treatment and experiences. She was convinced; she could now trust us to
treat her daughter’s burns. Because Facebook messaging is a free
service, she was able to contact Mercy Ships and arrange for Cindy to be
screened by the medical team. The surgery was successful, and the
vivacious, restored Cindy has been unleashed upon the world!
This summer, one of my co-workers at the Y shared her copy of the book, Made to Crave, by Lysa TerKeurst, with me. For someone who has known since Matt was in second grade that her eating is out of control, specifically when it comes to chocolate, this book was made for me. With it comes a 21-day challenge which I'm going to take - for the second time! - over the next 21 days! Join me on my journey as I share from my heart what Lysa has shared from hers and the impact it has had on me.
And if you'd like to borrow a copy of the book, I've got one right here . . .
I don't know about your dog, but our dog is a "workin' dog". If we're outside, working - she is, too!
She may vary from some of our chores - choosing chasing squirrels over picking up sticks or digging holes rather than raking, but Micah did catch her doing one of her favorite chores this weekend!
Annie's up on the roof - cleaning leaves out of the gutters! What a good girl!
Friday afternoon I had an MRI on my left knee at Twin Cities Orthopedic. The radiologist brought me back to the room and said, "You can put your shoes and coat and other stuff in this closet and you can throw your sweatshirt in the trash". What!?! Turns out she was a Lakeville South mom and I was wearing (the winning) Lakeville North sweatshirt!
Here's a lovely post reblogged from "through my porthole" . . .
Serah was a longed-for daughter, but her grandmother burst into
heart-broken tears at her birth. Counting her ten little toes should
have been a delight, but a birth abnormality that twisted Serah’s feet
at right-angles stole their joy. In their experience this was a life
sentence – a child born with club feet grew into an adult with club
feet. It took Serah’s mother Sandrine three days to gather the courage
to look at her beautiful daughter’s feet. Her father agonised over his
newborn’s limited options for the future.
Serah’s future seemed very bleak (Pic: Katie Keegan)
Thankfully, a Malagasy midwife was able to convince them help was on
it’s way. She knew Mercy Ships is able to correct this condition, and
that the hospital ship was returning to Madagascar for a second field
service. When they received Serah’s appointment, Sandrine was
overwhelmed with relief. She grasped her baby and danced around her
garden!
When I met Serah and Sandrine yesterday, they were still full of
smiles. For about 6 weeks now Serah has been receiving free Ponseti
treatment to correct the position of her feet. It is a most incredible process that
permanently changes the angle of the baby’s foot through a series of
leg casts, which are left on for a week each. A nick to the Achilles
tendon, a finial 3-week cast (and night braces for a few years
afterwards) produce a virtually painless and 98% effective, life-long
result for the babies. Before they even learn to walk, their feet are
straight and strong.
Serah will never remember the disability she was born with, but her parents will never forget what her future could have been.
P.S. The Ponseti method, which Mercy Ships is teaching to local
physical therapists, can only be performed on children under 3 years.
Older children are treated with orthopaedic surgery and casting to
correct their condition.
Knowing that we would be traveling a lot yesterday, we decided to go to Friday night church services at Evergreen and sleep in today. Evergreen has purchased the old Trinity building - we are members of Trinity, but have only attended services at the new building. Why is this so funny? Well, we walked into church Friday night and Dave Durry was Evergreen's worship pastor. Who's Trinity's? David Durey!
My problems seem oh, so small as I read nurse Amy Jones' post in her blog, "Throughaporthole". Give God the glory!
There are 2 million of them and their tribe is growing every
day. Each year there are 500,000 new cases globally. The total annual
surgery cases completed is not even 1% of that figure. Scary. These
figures come from the WHO, who we generally trust as health care
professionals. However, they think that they are underestimating the
problem. Other studies suggested these figures are grossly over
estimated. The truth is, it would be easier to find every MI5 agent in
the country and invite them to your Mum’s for afternoon tea within 24
hrs than it would ever be to ever quantify the silent tribe. No one
really knows their number or location.
The tribe is only made up of women, some 12 years old with their life
ahead of them; some are 89, blind and have recently had a stroke. They
are from 44 different countries and they don’t know anyone else in their
tribe. They are loners. Each of them pushed out from their society,
abandoned by their community, and forgotten.
They are bound together by the same debilitating, degrading and
disgusting condition. Why? Because they became pregnant. They conceived a
child far away from medical care, they struggled in labour, and when
then finally decided to go to the nearest hospital, it was too late. For
some, hospital means a 2 day drive; for others it’s 4 days. Being in
Labour for 4 days in many cases means death for both the mother and
child. It almost always means death for the child.
For those who don’t reach the hospital their baby dies inside and
will eventually come out some days later. For those who reach hospital
they will have a cesarean section if they saved enough money for the
sutures, otherwise they will have spent all their money on
transportation for nothing and their fate will be the same as those who
stayed at home. For all three, the women who stayed home, the one who
made it to the hospital but could not afford a cesarean and for the one
who had the cesarean there outcome looks much the same. A dead baby and a
broken uterus. The women in the village may get an infection and die
but then that could happen in the hospital too.
Each of the women will have holes. The pressure of the babies head on
their tissue will have created an area that had no blood flow for
sometime and therefore necrosed and dropped away leaving an opening.
Sometimes between the vagina and the bladder; sometimes between the
rectum and the vagina; sometimes it’s a small area; sometimes its large.
Regardless of the size of this new hole, it’s effects are similarly
terrifying. The woman finds that as she tries to recover from losing her
baby and being in labour for days, that she is also incontinent. The
new hole means that urine and the occasional faeces now comes from the
vagina which doesn’t have the muscular ability that the urethra or the
rectum has and the bodily fluids run out like a continual stream with no
ability to be stopped.
No baby, soon no family, no friends, no job, no house, no identity. Before they know it they are in the tribe. Alone. Silent.
We call it Obstetric Fistula. When the women are told by our
screening team that there is something that can be done they are
shocked. When they come to the ship they are embarrassed, alone and
silent. When they leave they are chatty, smiley and have another chance
at life. Most obstetric fistulas can be fixed quite easily with a 30
minute surgery and only cost around $200-$400. The Africa Mercy has
already been operating on these women and healing is slowly happening.
We have established an Obstetric Fistula clinic, now in full swing, full
of patients. The clinic will stay open and functional here in
Toamasina when this ship is long gone. Freedom From Fistula will take over when we leave and the healing can continue.
Photo Credit Justine Forrest, MGB16359 Ninina ready for her VVF Dress Ceremony
Today I met the 16 nurses who I will be training to take over this
clinic, to fill it with life and experience and excellent skills, step
by step. They are Malagasy; this is their country and they have just
embarked on something quite spectacular. They will offer hope daily that
doesn’t depend on a ship. As they heard the rules, the vision and the
sacrifice they each signed on the line that says “I do” and now we
officially have 16 Malagasy Obstetric Fistula nurses-in-training.
This excites me. Yesterday was a different story as I sat and held
the hand of a 17 year old girl as she wept out her pain and sweated out
an infection in the local hospital. She is 11 months pregnant. That
sounds funny, doesn’t it? 11. It took her a month to decide to go to the
local hospital 4 days away. Her baby was already falling out in bits
but she began to get sick, an infection was brewing. Now she lays there
no crying baby, her husband has left and until yesterday she didn’t know
that anything could be done about her new problem of leaking urine all
the time. Now she knows. I just hope she lives to see it.
Tomorrow has a lot of potential. A stones throw away from this woman
lies a clinic and Malagasy nurses that will soon be experts in all of
this and their treatment free and long lasting.
Speaking of hearts, look what I found on Aussie Nurse Deb Louden's blog, "Deb's Heart in Africa" as she serves on the Africa Mercy in Madagascar. All I can think is, "You go my friend!" or maybe "Good job, mate!"
At work in the ward one
night shift, it was just past
midnight when my co-worker’s patient started screaming her lungs out. It
was a 5
year old girl, who’d had a cyst removed from her tongue only a few hours
prior. She was writhing in her bed, screaming in the darkness. Her
grandma and
the Malagasy day crew working with us were both holding her down in the
bed. Her
nurse went over to her bed in the darkness, behind the blue curtain that
shielded
the light from the patients. Her nurse had a tiny baby already in her
arms, as
she was just about to feed her. I went behind the curtain also to see
what was
going on. At seeing her patient’s distress and not knowing what was
causing it,
the nurse turned to me and passed me the baby. I looked around for
somewhere to
put this tiny baby girl. There were no other day crew present as they
were
eating their midnight dinner, so I hurried back to the baby’s bed where
her
mama was. I tapped the mama on the shoulder, “Azafady mama” (excuse me) and I dumped the baby into her arms and hurried
away.
The screaming and writhing of this 5yo continued and we
shone a flashlight into her mouth to see if we could find the problem. There
was something in there. Was it a
nasogastric tube? I thought, no, she
doesn’t have one. OH MY GOSH, it’s a
worm! I could see the worm moving around in her mouth as we shone the light
inside.
I left the drama at the bedside and went and put gloves on,
wondering how on earth I was going to get the worm out without breaking it into
pieces since it was so soft and instruments to reach it would be hard and sharp.
I called another ward for a third nurse to come for back-up as this little girl
was just beside herself, terrified.
I asked God for help as I walked back to the bedside where
the nurse, day crew and grandma were struggling to keep the girl in her bed as
she fought them, gagging, coughing, screaming, saliva flinging in every direction.
When we turned the flashlight back on and shone it in her mouth, the worm had
moved from inside her mouth up the back of her throat and was in her nose. In
fact, the worm was looped in and out her nose, partly down her throat but part
of the body hung outside the nose and so I scooped my gloved hand in and with a
swift move, pulled the whole worm out of her nose. I held it gently with my
thumb and index finger as we told our little girl, “vita, vita vita” (it’s finished, it’s finished, it’s finished). She
eventually calmed down and the wild, terrified look in her eyes calmed and she
fell asleep again. The worm died immediately and we left it in a kidney basin
for the doctors to view in the morning.
I don't have a brain tumor like my friend Jana. I don't have breast cancer like my friend Rosemary. I don't have kidney cancer like my friend Logan. I have a concussion, a traumatic brain injury. I should heal . . . someday.
It's just that waiting for "someday" became especially hard today when the second neuropychologist said to me, "I can't do anything for you. I don't know how to help you. I can send you to a different Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic."
So I wait and I stutter and I fight headaches and I'm light sensitive and I have to remember in Whom my hope is placed. I have to believe that He has a plan and a purpose for all of this. And in His time . . . He is the Great Physician. He will heal.
A beautiful story reblogged from "Through a Porthole". Enjoy!
Over several weeks I spent a bunch of time hanging out with Fenosoa
and his grandfather Denis. Their very special relationship under-girds
an epic journey to seek help for the five-year old’s worsening medical
condition.
Although Fenosoa’s family live in the same village, he shares a hut
with his grandfather “because he loves me,” explains Papa Denis with his
two-tooth grin. It was Papa Denis who heard the radio broadcast about
Mercy Ships coming to Madagascar to provide specific free surgeries.
They were elated. Fenosoa had been born with a cyst on the side of his
abdomen. It grew along with the boy and sometimes made him loose his
balance. The cyst resembled an old-fashioned water canteen tucked
beneath his skin.
Papa Denis and Fenosoa have a unique connection (Pic: Ruben Plomp)
So, 86 year-old Papa Denis and his beloved grandson
began their intrepid expedition to seek help. Together with a friend to
carry their supplies, they walked for five days through
bush-lands to reach the nearest public transport. Over three more days,
mini buses brought them progressively closer to their destination; the
Mercy Ship and the surgery the little boy desperately needed.
Fenosoa is the youngest person from his isolated village to journey
to the coast. A hospital ship is going to be a tough one for Fenosoa to
explain to his playmates. He thought hard as he happily doodled his
cowboy coloring book, sitting on his bed in the ward. “The ship is so
big, it looks like a village!” was the only way he could describe it.
The boy and his Grandfather maintain an endless conversation, and
their love for each other is deeply moving. When the 500 gram cyst was
removed, Fenosoa declared to us both, “I don’t know what happened. I was
sleeping, and when I woke up, it was gone!”
Fenosoa couldn’t wait to get back to his village. Back to endless
soccer matches and marbles; rowdy games played by little boys around the
world regardless of the language they speak.
My heart and prayers went with them on the journey back to their
village. The elderly man and oh-so-little boy said they were ‘taking it
easy’ after the surgery – walking for six days to cover the distance
instead of five. Life is hard for most, in this beautiful nation.
You can't live without it! But I was happy to on Monday when I found out that the "Administering Emergency Oxygen" course I was teaching on Saturday was cancelled due to no students! Three days later, I got the call - "Something's wrong with the system and you actually have five students on Saturday. Are you still free?" I just opened my e-mail five hours later and I have five more students for a total of ten! We will be having "Oxygen" on Saturday! Take a deep breath . . .
Today's post has been reblogged from my Aussie nurse friend Deb's blog, "Deb's Heart in Africa". You'll see Deb in some of the pictures . . .
Earlier on in the year I wrote about Mioty who was a live wire
in our ward. From a very troubled beginning to the sweetest end, she brightened
and challenged our lives. One day when I was sitting at my desk in the ward, she
came walking up to me singing in English (a language she didn’t know) “Bless
the Lord, oh my soul, oh oh oh my soul” It came out of the blue and I barely
knew what to do! She climbed up onto my lap and we sang the song together and
she joined in the parts she knew. Sometimes she’d walk up to the desk and point
at the speakers and say “oh my soul, oh my soul” so we’d play the song for her.
A few weeks ago when my ward opened for the first day of
this Mada2 outreach, we gathered as a group of evening shift nurses and day
crew and prayed together. My team leader then played Matt Redman’s song 10,000 Reasons and we sang it together. As the song played I actually wanted to
burst into tears as the ache of missing Mioty was felt so deeply. She was no longer in
the ward and wouldn’t be grabbing me by the hand to come and play with her or
whisper in my ear or sit on my lap and type with my fingers. It’s hard
to know what to do with an ache for someone you love and deeply miss.
Ever since Mioty left the ward in May, my friend and
co-worker Heather and myself planned to go and visit her in her home. This last
weekend we were able to organise it, along with another co-worker Ria.
After coming off night shift at 8am, I hopped into bed for a
short sleep before getting up for lunch, putting the final things into my
backpack and heading off the ship. Our small group were very privileged in
being able to catch a MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) flight to the capital city, cutting an 8-9hr drive of
very windy roads down to just 50 minutes of flying in an 8 seater plane. It was
amazing to see Madagascar from the air in such a small aircraft. MAF does
wonderful things in Madagascar and partnering with Mercy Ships this last year
has been amazing for us, helping us reach places far and wide in a country with
few main roads and very inaccessible terrain.
The three of us nurses and our translator Anja, arrived
outside of Shoprite supermarket and stood waiting. Only minutes later out of
nowhere appeared Mioty and her mama. Mama had a wide, almost toothless smile
and she hugged each of us. In her quiet, gentle way she seemed excited to see
us. Mioty had a cap on her 6 year old head, clasping her mama’s hand tightly,
she neither said salama (hello) nor looked
up to meet us eye to eye, but as we walked back to her house, she skipped and
bounced, excitement showing in her step.
We walked down the dusty pathway through the village, built
on one side of the old royal palace on the hill in Antananarivo, the capital
city of Madagascar. We walked past the
washing place where Mioty’s mama worked each day washing clothes for her
clients. The place was surrounded by half walls of concrete with wide, metal,
square-shaped bars to the roof. The wide ‘mesh’ bars had clean, squeezed out
laundry hanging on it and the women inside worked and scrubbed to clean their
clothes and others.
We were brought into a small, neat lounge room with three couches.
This room belonged to Mioty's aunt. We sat and chatted with mama, beside
her Mioty played with the pieces of a plastic clock, stubbornly not answering
questions but listening intently to the conversation around her.
Ria had visited Mioty a couple of times in the last few months and had told Heather and myself about the tv in Mioty’s
house that Mioty had decorated with stickers that she had been given by us in the
hospital. She asked Mioty’s mama if they could show us the tv.
Mama led us out of the room and down a small outdoor passage
way. She unlocked the padlocked wooden door to their concrete house. Pushing
open two wooden window shutters let light into the small room they called their
house.
At the end of the room, filling the width of the room was a
wooden bunk bed, which slept Mioty, two older sisters and their mama. On the
left of the room was a bookshelf and piles and piles of clothes and things. On
the right hand side of the room was a giant tv that didn’t look like it worked
and it had been turned into a piece of art by Mioty’s stickering anyway. There
was also an iron ‘stove’ for cooking which she did inside the tiny house.
On top of the tv was the knitted bear, given to her by the
Admissions team on the Africa Mercy,
which had been knitted by a kind someone overseas, who will probably
never know
how far this teddy has travelled and what he has seen. Taped to the
walls were some of the art projects Mioty had done on the ward back at
the beginning of the
year. Even the instructions for making salt water written in Malagasy
were
stuck high on the wall to see.
Mioty sat on her bed while we chatted to Mama. She pulled
out her colouring book and started colouring, she pulled down one of her
knitted dolls and played with it, she did head-stands on the bed using the bunk
slats above her to climb on, all the while, silent. We asked her if she
remembered the song we used to sing and so we sung it to her and as I was
sitting on the bed next to her, I could hear her whispering the words along
with us.
We asked her and her mama if they would like to get ice
cream, our treat. So we left their house and moved to the grassy area outside
their housing area and waited for Mioty’s sisters to come. Mioty started
playing in the sand, just like any kid. Chickens and baby chicks were
scratching around in the area, a few ladies were doing their washing in a tub
of water and Mioty found an empty yoghurt pot and played in the sand. A knitted
beanie covered her wild, dark curly hair.
Both sisters turned up, one was clearly doing mama’s work
washing for the day, but put down her load and joined us for the walk up the
road to the ice cream place. Orders were placed and ice cream was enjoyed.
Despite living only 2 minutes walk from this shop and the ice cream being less
than $1 per cone, Mioty’s mama had never been there before. I’m certain her
income from washing clothes was never high enough to support treats such as an
ice cream.
Back in their home Mioty was a little more lively and vocal
than the previous hour. I could see that if we spent several more hours there,
or even came to visit regularly, she wouldn’t need time to warm up to us, but we
would see the same cheeky, boisterous girl that we had known and come to adore
in the ward immediately. It was truly so special to be invited into their home
and to see a tiny glimpse of their lives.
Mioty starts school for the first time next week. Her
wounds from her surgery back in February, to make her a nose, have mostly healed.
The wounds that were still open when we closed the hospital at the end of May,
have healed so nicely with the care that her mama was giving her. She told us
that Mioty still fought her to clean her face and eye where it was still not
healed. We felt so encouraged though that her mama had done such a great job!
More surgery could still be done, but for now we will wait and see as the skin
of her new nose settles into place and shrinks a little. I certainly hope it
was not the last time I see her in her home, but perhaps the first.
There were multiple groups at Sand Creek today, but the BIG group - 65 7th graders - came from St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie. And as I sent them down the zip line, I mentioned to those in football jerseys this was the year that Lakeville North was going to beat Eden Prairie! You heard it here first, folks!
Hmmm . . . right name, wrong group! I meant the sopranos of the Wannemingo/Kenyon High School choir whom I spent yesterday with at Sand Creek Adventures, along with the altos and the men! That is seriously how we divided them into three groups - the altos, the sopranos and the men. They were an absolute blast! Just don't drop kick the mushrooms!
This summer, one of my co-workers at the Y shared her copy of the book, Made to Crave, by Lysa TerKeurst, with me. For someone who has known since Matt was in second grade that her eating is out of control, specifically when it comes to chocolate, this book was made for me. With it comes a 21-day challenge which I'm going to take - for the second time! - over the next 21 days! Join me on my journey as I share from my heart what Lysa has shared from hers and the impact it has had on me.
Friday afternoon I had an MRI on my left knee at Twin Cities Orthopedic. The radiologist brought me back to the room and said, "You can put your shoes and coat and other stuff in this closet and you can throw your sweatshirt in the trash". What!?! Turns out she was a Lakeville South mom and I was wearing (the winning) Lakeville North sweatshirt!
