Some changes

The last few months have been quiet for me on the blog front.  It's been a struggle to create time to write, and there always seems to be something more pressing that needs doing.  But tonight all of my people are asleep and I feel the writing bug, so ... here's to a new post, finally!

I'm not going to attempt to catch up on months of neglected posting, but I am excited about a couple of recent changes in our lives.  (Much of this is the result of a Christmas gift from one of the couples here on station - a date night! Our kids spent a very fun evening at their house while Mark and I enjoyed an entire afternoon and evening of uninterrupted conversation, and a dinner delivery so I didn't have to spend my 'free' evening cooking for us. It. Was. Amazing.)

The areas in which we're making some changes are - my approach to homeschooling, the amount of hired help we have in the house, and my involvement at the hospital. 

After a lot of deliberation and prayer, we are switching our school curriculum.  Our new school books arrived in the mail recently, and we started using them this week - and we're excited!  However, this curriculum doesn't come with DVDs so I am hands-on teaching for the entire school morning as well as preparing for Levi's preschool year (which I think will look much different than Anna's!).  In light of this change, we have decided to hire additional help for me at home.  Currently we have a lady come one half-day a week, so we'll be adding another half day or (hopefully!) two. 

A second reason for this is that beginning the last week of this month, I will be spending one morning a week at the hospital doing patient education.  I'm so excited about this!  Some members of staff recently suggested that patients need more teaching than the doctors are able to provide given the time constraints of a very busy hospital - both on the wards and in the outpatient department.  However, since the current budget doesn't allow for an additional nurse to be hired for this position, myself and another missionary RN will be beginning patient teaching during the week. 
I can't count the number of times Mark has come home from clinic with stories about patients who were truly trying to do the right thing to help themselves or a family member, but because of lack of information ended up doing more harm than good.  The young mother who came in with a malnourished baby after weaning too early, having been told by relatives that she would pass her asthma to her child through her breastmilk.  The man with high blood pressure who had stopped adding salt to his food in an effort to control his hypertension, but had no idea that the boullion-cube-esque seasoning that he'd switched to and is cheap to buy here is also loaded with salt.  The elderly man with COPD who dutifully brought his (unopened) inhaler back to his follow-up appointments but wasn't getting any better. 
It breaks my heart that in order for the doctors here to get through the line of patients who are waiting to be seen each day - some of whom have travelled for days just to get to the hospital - they simply don't have the time to sit and teach their patients how to manage their various illnesses.  And, as it happens, I learned in nursing school that this is something I love to do!  So, starting in a couple of weeks, I'll be working with a translator to provide education on two of the more common (and most commonly misunderstood) illnesses that bring people to the clinic: diabetes, and asthma. 
As I've been creating my teaching material, it has struck me that these are two diseases with which I am well acquainted: I have had some level of gestational diabetes in all my pregnancies, and my son has asthma for which daily medical management is required.  I can easily identify with the patients I'll be teaching. 
It has been challenging to put together teaching material that will be understood across the language and cultural differences. Most of the patients I'll be teaching do not have any concept of foods being made of carbohydrates or being broken down into sugars (so yes, I have come up with diabetes education material that doesn't reference carbs at all!).  And it's not as simple as reading food labels, counting carbs and looking for sugar-free or low-carb options.  When you subsistence farm and what you grow and eat is a very starchy root vegetable, transitioning to a low-carb diet can pose quite a challenge!  Also, there is a fairly prevalent idea here that sickness is brought on by either sin in your life, or the curse of someone with whom you have recently fallen out.  This is an idea I will have to challenge as I meet with patients.
My translator told me today as we went through some of my teaching material, that she was actually a patient of Mark's in the fall, when she'd been having some breathing difficulty.  Mark prescribed her an inhaler to use for the duration of her illness, and was actually able to sit and teach her how to use it.  However, when she went home she confided to her husband that she was nervous about this new kind of medicine.  It wasn't a 'drink-marisin' (a tablet or liquid medicine to drink) and it wasn't a 'shoot-maricin' (a shot), and she felt anxious about it.  Her husband had to remind her that Dr Mark wouldn't give her something dangerous, and that if he told her to use it she should use it. 

Knowledge is something we take for granted so easily in the west.  We can acquire any information we want within seconds online, and do many times a day - especially information pertaining to our health and well-being.  I love the idea of empowering people to take care of themselves and their families by providing them with the information to do so.  I'm a little nervous about it since I haven't done any type of nursing work in about a year and a half, but I'm excited to be able to hopefully make a small difference in the lives of some of the patients who come through our hospital.