Good Friday

Today has been a unique Good Friday for me. This morning I meditated on the words in Matthew and Mark about the hours leading up to and through the crucifixion of Christ as He took on the ultimate sacrifice of death. Being moved by the solemnity and indescribable love that scripture portrays to us, I sat humbled and honored to believe in and know Him. My eyes moved to subsequent verses sharing the victory of Christ being raised from death. As we ponder the gravity of today, we also delight in the celestial resurrection that is to follow as we celebrate this Sunday.

I wondered how God would unfold this day in Nalerigu, Ghana in remembrance of His holy Son suffering and dying on the cross.

Well, first, this morning we rounded on the patients in the hospital. Then, we moved over to clinic to take in all the patients who had come from afar, since they did not realize today was a clinic holiday. Jodi, Rachel and I offered to see all of those patients, so the missionaries could have a break. It was as if it was pre-ordained that a pediatric neurolgoist would be there. Person after person filed in with a history of seizures and in need of further medical management. One was newly diagnosed and we initiated treatment. Another medical officer working at the hospital had to take care of a person exposed to rabies. One girl had a very telling smile from having taken Dilantin, an anti-epileptic drug, for many years. She had the side effect known as gingival hyperplasia that we usually read about but don't actually see. Again, these are things we can only hope God brings to our minds from the pictures we've studied, yet we have never had the opportunity to see back home, where the illness or disease would have been caught much earlier and prevented this stage of progression.

One 3-year-old boy came in with intractible seizures. He has over 6 a day with no seizure medicines ever having been started. He has suffered this way for 8 months of his life. He keeps falling on his face during the seizures and has infections growing in the sites of the scrapes. Thankfully, he started treatment for his seizures today.

One child had a hard black thickened area over her anterior fontanelle or soft spot. The girls asked me if it was a birth mark. After closely looking at it, I knew it was a birth mark I've never read about. It was as if it was stuck on the head. I just happened to ask if folk medicine had been used on the baby and, sure enough, the mother had put tree sap on the baby's soft spot to cover it for months of protection. Only here....

Now, for the moving afternoon that has so captivated our thoughts for most of the day. Just after imagining that Jesus had endured much torture by this point in the day 2000 years ago, we recall according to the Bible that He was crucified and dead by around 3 pm. At approximately 1:45 pm today, we received notice since Jodi and I are on call that a girl was unconscious at the hospital. My first questions were from past experience here, "did she fall from a mango tree?" or "did she have a seizure?" No, in both instances. They didn't know why she was unconscious.

We drove the truck up to the hospital and ran to the bedside. Ayishetu is the girl's name. She is one of the sickest patients I have treated here. She was seriously a critically ill patient needing the best of best intensive care units. I did not even know if she would make it before our eyes. I quickly examined her, while Jodi and Rachel tried to take the history. She lay there limp and sweating profusely. I pinched her skin on all her extremities to see if I could get her to respond and she only moved the right side initially. We got a little more history and found out she had abdominal pains earlier, then stiffened three times today and suddenly became unconscious. Because her symptoms localized, I initially thought she could have a mass in the right side of her head and I did not want to do an LP (lumbar puncture) for fear she would herniate her brain. Her pupils were still equal, so there were no signs of herniation yet. Her neck was not stiff, but she definitely had what we call encephalopathy and likely sepsis. It was just us at the bedside with many nursing students and two nurses. I quietly asked God to give us wisdom for what to treat, since we did not have the means like back at home of scanning her brain or finding out what was wrong. We treated her with all the strong antibiotics here and gave her steroids in case she had swelling in her brain, along with oxygen, fluids, and some meds to help clear her pulmonary edema. Too much medical lingo, but it was a situation where every second mattered. We asked the mom if she was a Christian and she was not. However, she immediately said she was open to us praying. I asked the nurse to translate, "About this moment 2000 years ago, Jesus Christ suffered greatly and died for us, since He loves us so much. Because of what He did for us, we have the ability to be forgiven for our sins." We went on to say, "3 days later He arose from the dead and is currently alive, and that is why we can believe in Him and ask Him for this kind of help right now. We know He chooses to heal in different ways either with Him or here on earth." We all continued to pray for His will with healing, while believing in His miraculous power. We didn't leave the bedside for over an hour and we continued to see improvement with Ayishetu gradually moving more, including the left and right side of her body. Finally, another hour passed and the mom was holding her daughter in her lap with the child's eyes open and looking at us for us to take a picture.

Ayishetu is still critically ill, but she is completely and has always been in God's hands. Pray for her, please, tonight and for her family's salvation. What a way to spend Good Friday in remembrance of Him. It's more like, He did this for us. Wow.