Sitting down to write tonight, I find my mind strangely blank on what happened today. :p
I sat in on consultations with Scott again today, for the last time. Tomorrow, the Wilson's leave at 11:00 in the morning. They have a 2:00 flight out of Mole. Nothing too exciting happened today. Fellow came in that had a catheter. . . had a HIV+ patient, but that's not too unusual.
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11:45PM
It's raining, lightening, and thundering outside right now. There is a nice, cool breeze flowing through the window. In short, it's awesome. :) The Leach's are expressing amazement at the fact that it has been raining so much, as we are at the very end of the rainy season, and there is generally not this much rain. I love it, except for the mud. :p
After consultations were finished in the afternoon, Grace, Betsy, and I went back up to the house and watched The Epitome of Hyperbole by Brian Regan. Great comedian. :) After we watched the whole thing, we also listened to four audio clips of him that I had on my iPod that weren't on the show we watched. I think most people enjoyed him. :)
We had the Catholic Sisters over for dinner today. Woohoo for pizza and coke!! :-D And then peanut butter and . . . I can't remember the other type of cookie that was made. . . but we had those for dessert. :)
After the sisters left, a few of us started discussing stories that we grew up with, and I found that many stories I remembered came from a book called The Book of Virtues. The Leach's and the Wilson's both seemed to know some of the stories also. We found the book in the Leach's library and I read two stories out of it outloud. By the time I made it through the first one, St. George and the Dragon, the entirety of both families had gathered in the dining room/living room and were listening. After that tale, I also read How Much Land Does a Man Need?, which I was shocked to discover was written by Leo Tolstoy. We will definitely have to read more out of that book before I leave. :-D
Mafia, Hearts, and Dutch Blitz filled out the rest of the night, and now I think it's time for bed. Good night, all! :-D
Saturday, July 24, 2010
07.20.2010 - Tuesday
Today is my birthday. My golden birthday, in fact. Twenty years of age on the twentieth of the month. And here I am in a foreign country. “Where you lead me, I will follow. No turning back, no turning back.”
Decent day. Went down and emailed/facebooked, attempted to blog in the morning before breakfast. When I got back up to the house, everyone was just sitting down at the table to eat. After prayer, they sang me Happy Birthday and I opened a card from them. Very awesome, signed by each one with a little note. It was pretty cool. :)
Scott and I saw several patients this morning, although nothing too fascinating. When we got down to the clinic in the morning, we moved some beds around in the OR so we could move the sonogram machine down there. Denise was doing her consultations in that room, and today is OB day. After Scott and I finished up with the few non-OB patients, we went in to Denise's room and watched the ultrasounds and dopplers being down. Grace was translating for Denise. They were basically just trying to determine age of the baby, as almost all of the women were there for the first time (for the pregnancy). Some were 37 weeks along, and it was their first visit.
Denise did full ultrasounds on the first four of her patients to get comfortable with the machine, and then decided to do just the consultations and dopplers. If the age was uncertain, she would do ultrasounds. By the time she'd done those first four, however, word had spread that one could see one's baby via the picture machine. Each patient after that requested an ultrasound.
I learned how use the doppler to get the baby's heart rate, and did that on a few patients. One mother was having twins and didn't know it. Till today, that is. Via the ultrasound, Denise found a second baby alive and well. The mother looked pretty happy. :) Also developed a couple more x-ray films, although I did one upside down. Lol
Watched Defiance (with Daniel Craig) tonight. Based on a true story during WWII. It's pretty violent, got a bit of language, and some sexual innuendo, but beyond that, it was a decent movie. I think I liked it, which was surprising. It was a bit thought-provoking.
Okay, it's late. I'm really just journaling so I will stay awake while my iPod charges enough to get through the night. I think it's done enough now. :)
Decent day. Went down and emailed/facebooked, attempted to blog in the morning before breakfast. When I got back up to the house, everyone was just sitting down at the table to eat. After prayer, they sang me Happy Birthday and I opened a card from them. Very awesome, signed by each one with a little note. It was pretty cool. :)
Scott and I saw several patients this morning, although nothing too fascinating. When we got down to the clinic in the morning, we moved some beds around in the OR so we could move the sonogram machine down there. Denise was doing her consultations in that room, and today is OB day. After Scott and I finished up with the few non-OB patients, we went in to Denise's room and watched the ultrasounds and dopplers being down. Grace was translating for Denise. They were basically just trying to determine age of the baby, as almost all of the women were there for the first time (for the pregnancy). Some were 37 weeks along, and it was their first visit.
Denise did full ultrasounds on the first four of her patients to get comfortable with the machine, and then decided to do just the consultations and dopplers. If the age was uncertain, she would do ultrasounds. By the time she'd done those first four, however, word had spread that one could see one's baby via the picture machine. Each patient after that requested an ultrasound.
I learned how use the doppler to get the baby's heart rate, and did that on a few patients. One mother was having twins and didn't know it. Till today, that is. Via the ultrasound, Denise found a second baby alive and well. The mother looked pretty happy. :) Also developed a couple more x-ray films, although I did one upside down. Lol
Watched Defiance (with Daniel Craig) tonight. Based on a true story during WWII. It's pretty violent, got a bit of language, and some sexual innuendo, but beyond that, it was a decent movie. I think I liked it, which was surprising. It was a bit thought-provoking.
Okay, it's late. I'm really just journaling so I will stay awake while my iPod charges enough to get through the night. I think it's done enough now. :)
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
07.19.2010 - Monday
Oh Monday. Why must you come so often! You could at least take a day off once a month and do us all a favor!
All things considered, though, it wasn't that bad of a day. I went down to the clinic before breakfast and did some emailing and attempted to get a blog post up. That didn't work out so well, and I tried a couple more times during the course of the day without luck. Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll be able to get a post up.
First order of business clinic-wise was the new laptop the clinic just got. For some reason, the screen was not turning on upon boot-up. Faith hooked it up to an external CRT monitor and I attempted to look up some answers to the problem. Before I started, however, I tried cold-booting the computer and putting it in sleep mode. Nothing made the screen turn on. I didn't see any easy fixes online, and I was kind of at my wits end. I'd seen some vague references to removing the battery or making sure the RAM was seated well, so I decided I would try both of those on a gamble just to see if they would help. I removed the battery and then removed and replaced both RAM sticks. Upon rebooting the computer, the screen worked fine. YAY! :)
After that, I helped Scott as he took one final look at the young lady with the abscess under her arm. The wound was looking wonderful, and he taped it up one last time before releasing her. Then it was on to general consultations the rest of the day. Nothing too terribly exciting, I'm afraid.
Leftovers for dinner, Joe, Grace, and I washed up the dishes. Went down and emailed for just a bit. The inverter was pretty low on juice, so I didn't stay on long. I basically just downloaded all my mail, then turned off the power. Grace and Betsy came along and asked me to run to the bakery with them so they wouldn't have to walk in the dark. I obliged them and then went back to the clinic and wrote a couple of emails. Before I went back up to the house, I turned the power back on and sent them. Tomorrow, I'll probably go down before breakfast again and write some more emails and try to get that silly blog post up.
I found that quote from C.S. Lewis today. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” That. . . that is a fascinating quote. Definitely going up on my Facebook status tomorrow. I believe the quote is from Lewis' book, The Weight of Glory.
I also picked Scott's brain for Air Force/medical info. Found out that I would only owe the Air Force 4 years of service, not 4 active and 4 inactive like I previously thought. Also, my residency (which would include my general surgery licsensing), would be included in the 4 years I spend with the Air Force. Upon completion of medical school, I'd automatically be a Captain, and often about half way through the time commitment, you receive a promotion as the Air Force tries to entice you to stay on. Scott finished up as a Major. Sounds pretty good to me! :) I should check on pay rates for those ranks. Also, I need to ask Scott if you are paid full wages while attending medical school (I imagine you are) and what/how internships factor into the whole thing. I think that internships are part of the residency, but I'm not totally sure.
07.18.2010 - Sunday
You'll notice that I changed the background to the blog. I did that because when I copied and pasted journal entries, they were not showing up properly. Changing the background appears to have fixed the problem. :-D
Also, I've posted several times in a row. I'm basically just doing a blog entry per day of my journal. Make sure you read them all! :-D
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Apparently I was too tired yesterday to journal. We went to the beach and spent several hours there. It was fairly fun, expect for the always annoying sand and icky salty feeling after swimming. Grace, Betsy, and I snorkeled for a while, looking at the coral about 100 yards off the shore. That was fun, although after an hour my ankles started to get rather tired. Steve got us fish from the restaurant on the beach. Two fish, 10 banan-pase, and 8 bucks. It fed all of us there at the beach: Scott, Denise, Chalice, Mikayla, Joseph, Steve, Grace, Betsy, and myself. Faith stayed home to watch the preemies and to cook us dinner – enchiladas!
I don't remember much of what happened after dinner last night, so I'm just guessing I was a little tired.
I finished the Tom Clancy novel that I was reading today. I immediately started in on a book by Gavin Menzies called 1421: The Year China Discovered America. It is, so far, a fascinating book. It details how many of the maps that Europeans had when they started charting the world had items on them that were not yet discovered by them. Gavin is laying out a fairly clear history (as much of one as there can be, since much of Chinese History was destroyed by a Chinese Dynasty) of the late 1300s and the early 1400s, and the empire that Zhu Dhi built for himself. Gavin claims that the Chinese charted the entire world, basically, and first discovered America. It's a mind boggling and thought provoking book that requires one to completely leave behind the commonly accepted history of the West.
Steve got two calls this morning right before church that requested an ambulance pick up for a woman in hard labor. Grace, Denise, and I headed down to the hospital so that we could help/observe with one of the births while another doctor (Felix) did the other. Steve was only able to find one of the women, and brought her to the hospital before heading off to church where the rest of the group already was. After realizing that only one women was going to be at the hospital and making sure Dr. Felix was there to handle it, Grace, Denise, and I went on to church ourselves. Apparently the message this morning was a bit . . . non-cohesive. I wouldn't know, of course. I was reading 2 Chronicles 6, where Solomon prays for God to kind of be centralized in the temple they were building, and that every time someone humbled themselves and prayed at/towards the temple, that God would hear. God answers him in chapter 7 with the familiar, “If my people, called by My name, humble themselves and pray . . . “. I found It interesting that no where did God say they had to pray towards the temple, be at the temple, or really do anything with the temple. That was, of course, on a cursory glance. I shall continue looking at and studying the passage.
Watched the last session of the Truth Project tonight: Community. One thing stuck out to me quite strongly. It was something that C.S. Lewis said. “You have never met a mere mortal. Every human is a soul either horribly monstrous or eternally splendid.” That is not quite the wording. . . I shall have to look that up tomorrow when I have internet. Anyways, the idea that I have never met a mere mortal, that every person I have come in contact with is an eternal soul is just earth-shattering. How often do I treat people like scum? How often do I ignore the needy, the outcast, the ones that don't fit my ideas of acceptable? And yet God says that His heart is with the needy, the poor, the outcast, and is against the proud, the afflictors, etc. How convicting. :p Another thing that was interesting? God is humble. Try that one on for size.
I think I'm falling in love with this Sibelius symphony. Symphony No 2. It's pretty tight. Tomorrow marks 2 weeks that I have been in Haiti. It partially feels like it's been every bit of two weeks if not longer, and partially that it's not been that long at all. I'm wondering how the next four weeks will be. Only one more day of being a teenager too. . .
Also, I've posted several times in a row. I'm basically just doing a blog entry per day of my journal. Make sure you read them all! :-D
******** *****
Apparently I was too tired yesterday to journal. We went to the beach and spent several hours there. It was fairly fun, expect for the always annoying sand and icky salty feeling after swimming. Grace, Betsy, and I snorkeled for a while, looking at the coral about 100 yards off the shore. That was fun, although after an hour my ankles started to get rather tired. Steve got us fish from the restaurant on the beach. Two fish, 10 banan-pase, and 8 bucks. It fed all of us there at the beach: Scott, Denise, Chalice, Mikayla, Joseph, Steve, Grace, Betsy, and myself. Faith stayed home to watch the preemies and to cook us dinner – enchiladas!
I don't remember much of what happened after dinner last night, so I'm just guessing I was a little tired.
I finished the Tom Clancy novel that I was reading today. I immediately started in on a book by Gavin Menzies called 1421: The Year China Discovered America. It is, so far, a fascinating book. It details how many of the maps that Europeans had when they started charting the world had items on them that were not yet discovered by them. Gavin is laying out a fairly clear history (as much of one as there can be, since much of Chinese History was destroyed by a Chinese Dynasty) of the late 1300s and the early 1400s, and the empire that Zhu Dhi built for himself. Gavin claims that the Chinese charted the entire world, basically, and first discovered America. It's a mind boggling and thought provoking book that requires one to completely leave behind the commonly accepted history of the West.
Steve got two calls this morning right before church that requested an ambulance pick up for a woman in hard labor. Grace, Denise, and I headed down to the hospital so that we could help/observe with one of the births while another doctor (Felix) did the other. Steve was only able to find one of the women, and brought her to the hospital before heading off to church where the rest of the group already was. After realizing that only one women was going to be at the hospital and making sure Dr. Felix was there to handle it, Grace, Denise, and I went on to church ourselves. Apparently the message this morning was a bit . . . non-cohesive. I wouldn't know, of course. I was reading 2 Chronicles 6, where Solomon prays for God to kind of be centralized in the temple they were building, and that every time someone humbled themselves and prayed at/towards the temple, that God would hear. God answers him in chapter 7 with the familiar, “If my people, called by My name, humble themselves and pray . . . “. I found It interesting that no where did God say they had to pray towards the temple, be at the temple, or really do anything with the temple. That was, of course, on a cursory glance. I shall continue looking at and studying the passage.
Watched the last session of the Truth Project tonight: Community. One thing stuck out to me quite strongly. It was something that C.S. Lewis said. “You have never met a mere mortal. Every human is a soul either horribly monstrous or eternally splendid.” That is not quite the wording. . . I shall have to look that up tomorrow when I have internet. Anyways, the idea that I have never met a mere mortal, that every person I have come in contact with is an eternal soul is just earth-shattering. How often do I treat people like scum? How often do I ignore the needy, the outcast, the ones that don't fit my ideas of acceptable? And yet God says that His heart is with the needy, the poor, the outcast, and is against the proud, the afflictors, etc. How convicting. :p Another thing that was interesting? God is humble. Try that one on for size.
I think I'm falling in love with this Sibelius symphony. Symphony No 2. It's pretty tight. Tomorrow marks 2 weeks that I have been in Haiti. It partially feels like it's been every bit of two weeks if not longer, and partially that it's not been that long at all. I'm wondering how the next four weeks will be. Only one more day of being a teenager too. . .
07.16.2010 - Friday
This morning, Scott and Denise attempted a fluid tap of the young female that had a edemedous stomach. They drained about 200 ml from the bottom right quadrant of the abdomen, but unfortunately it only drained from a very local region, not the whole abdomen. There really isn't a whole lot more we can do, sadly.
After that procedure, Scott and I unpacked and packed the young female who had the abscess under her armpit. He stuck a Q-tip in the wound after unpacking it, and it came out coated with pure, red blood. This is good. :) Scott repacked the wound with gauze and told her to come back Monday so we could look at it again. Then it was consultations again the whole day until 2:00.
This evening we had movie night. We watched Invictus, a story about Nelson Mandella and the South Afrrican emancipation. It starred Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman. I'm not a huge fan of feel-good sports movies, and this one was no exception. There were a few good lessons, such as forgiveness of anything and everything your friends or enemies throw at you and racial equality, but beyond that, I did not really think the movie worth much. Of course, that forgiveness only comes from one place in the real world: Jesus Christ. So on that thought, the movie was a very excellent one. But beyond that, it really had no other redeeming qualities, although nothing was really “bad” per se. I'm just not a huge movie person at all. I guess I'm of the opinion that if a movie doesn't have a lot of good, biblical qualities, or has some strong allegories, then I'd just as soon not fill my mind with it. That is, of course, just my opinion. I generally don't condemn people who see lots of movies, although I will say that many people I know that watch a lot of movies would be much better off studying the Word of God instead. But I have my faults too, and I too do many things when I should be studying His Word instead.
I've felt a bit grouchy all day, which doesn't make me happy. I'm almost picking fights and getting irritated at people who have counter ideas. Unfortunately, those ideas often make perfect sense, which only compounds my irritation. Add to that the fact that I apparently got poison oak on my arms, and I'm not a happy camper. Oh well. Guess I'll take a shower and head to bed.
After that procedure, Scott and I unpacked and packed the young female who had the abscess under her armpit. He stuck a Q-tip in the wound after unpacking it, and it came out coated with pure, red blood. This is good. :) Scott repacked the wound with gauze and told her to come back Monday so we could look at it again. Then it was consultations again the whole day until 2:00.
This evening we had movie night. We watched Invictus, a story about Nelson Mandella and the South Afrrican emancipation. It starred Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman. I'm not a huge fan of feel-good sports movies, and this one was no exception. There were a few good lessons, such as forgiveness of anything and everything your friends or enemies throw at you and racial equality, but beyond that, I did not really think the movie worth much. Of course, that forgiveness only comes from one place in the real world: Jesus Christ. So on that thought, the movie was a very excellent one. But beyond that, it really had no other redeeming qualities, although nothing was really “bad” per se. I'm just not a huge movie person at all. I guess I'm of the opinion that if a movie doesn't have a lot of good, biblical qualities, or has some strong allegories, then I'd just as soon not fill my mind with it. That is, of course, just my opinion. I generally don't condemn people who see lots of movies, although I will say that many people I know that watch a lot of movies would be much better off studying the Word of God instead. But I have my faults too, and I too do many things when I should be studying His Word instead.
I've felt a bit grouchy all day, which doesn't make me happy. I'm almost picking fights and getting irritated at people who have counter ideas. Unfortunately, those ideas often make perfect sense, which only compounds my irritation. Add to that the fact that I apparently got poison oak on my arms, and I'm not a happy camper. Oh well. Guess I'll take a shower and head to bed.
07.15.2010 - Thursday
Wow, long day. Got up early this morning to go down to the clinic with Scott so he could do some internet work before the day got going. I got out my phone and set my alarm so I could be ready to go at 7:00. Unfortunately, I forgot that I hadn't used my phone since I left New York, and so it was still on ETZ, an hour ahead of Haiti. This meant that when I set my alarm for 6:30, I really set it for 5:30. I didn't realize that til I was up and dressed and looked at my iPod, which said it was 5:45. Fail. I laid back down for about an hour before getting up again.
After breakfast, Faith, Grace, Scott, Denise, and I went down to the clinic. First order of the day was sonography. Since no one here knows how to use the sonogram, Scott and Denise experimented with it for a while. When they felt somewhat comfortable as to the workings of it, they brought in the first patient. Young female, maybe 25 years old? She looked basically like she was 10 months pregnant with a 12 pound baby. But. . . she wasn't pregnant. There is a ton of fluid in her abdominal cavity and upper thorax. Sonography didn't show much to the inexperienced eye, although Scott and Denise thought it might have been something with the liver, given that there was so much fluid. Lab tests showed no problems with the liver, however. Tomorrow there will be a fluid tap attempt made to drain some of the fluid off. Hopefully that will ease her pain and make it easier to diagnose her condition.
Second patient was an older man, 65 years old, who also had slight swelling. Again, nothing conclusive was discovered through the sonogram. Scott later did a consultation with the man and found out that he was a heavy drinker until last year. That fact, combined with the liver and kidney results that came back rather poor from the lab tests, led Scott to believe that the swelling might be due to liver degeneration.
After the sonographies, I stayed with Scott and Grace and listened in on consultations on 8 or 10 people. Oh, I forgot to mention that Scott also lanced an abscess on a older teenage female. It was under her armpit, likely caused by a sebaceous gland getting clogged. It was...yummy. :p Unfortunately with abscesses, it is very hard to numb it because of how deep it goes and how the abscess is formed. I think she was in a significant amount of pain. The rest of the day passed in relative peace with Scott and Grace and we stopped around 3:30 when we ran out of patients. I stayed in the office for another hour or so checking email, then decided to work on the sonogram. Earlier in the day, Scott had expressed a desire to see if we could connect the sonogram to a computer in order to at least take pictures if not do a video feed to a radiologist or tech in the States. I worked on trying to get that set up for about an hour with no luck. The sonogram machine was really intended only to have an output to a larger screen, not to connect to a computer. The only thing I found online regarding connecting to a computer was the ability (with software) to download hi-resolution pictures to the computer. The software likely came with the unit when it was new, but who knows where that stuff is now.
We have 8 visitors not including the Wilson family. They are just staying the night. A fellow named Chuck has a ministry called Truth Ministries and he brings teams short term (often just a few days) to Haiti. They stayed last night at the Trueloves and staying tonight with us. Tomorrow, Steve will bring them down to Mole so they can fly out. That makes for a rather full house, and of course tonight would be my night for dish duty. Joe and I did the dishes (I found out he is 13, not 12) and Grace was kind enough to help out drying and putting them away. Doing dishes for 18 people is not a easy chore. :p We had pizza and coke tonight, which was soooo good. Yummy!!
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After dinner and dishes, Scott and I went down to the clinic so he could do a bit more computer work. Also took one of the couples that are here as guests so they could send an email or something too. I slept, jounaled, emailed, facebooked, and played boggle on my iPod. Quite a productive evening. :-D
The Wilson kids, Grace, Betsy, and I played Dutch Blitz again tonight. The Wilson kids are getting better at the game and hopefully will provide much competition.
Mmm...guess I should take a shower and head for bed.
After breakfast, Faith, Grace, Scott, Denise, and I went down to the clinic. First order of the day was sonography. Since no one here knows how to use the sonogram, Scott and Denise experimented with it for a while. When they felt somewhat comfortable as to the workings of it, they brought in the first patient. Young female, maybe 25 years old? She looked basically like she was 10 months pregnant with a 12 pound baby. But. . . she wasn't pregnant. There is a ton of fluid in her abdominal cavity and upper thorax. Sonography didn't show much to the inexperienced eye, although Scott and Denise thought it might have been something with the liver, given that there was so much fluid. Lab tests showed no problems with the liver, however. Tomorrow there will be a fluid tap attempt made to drain some of the fluid off. Hopefully that will ease her pain and make it easier to diagnose her condition.
Second patient was an older man, 65 years old, who also had slight swelling. Again, nothing conclusive was discovered through the sonogram. Scott later did a consultation with the man and found out that he was a heavy drinker until last year. That fact, combined with the liver and kidney results that came back rather poor from the lab tests, led Scott to believe that the swelling might be due to liver degeneration.
After the sonographies, I stayed with Scott and Grace and listened in on consultations on 8 or 10 people. Oh, I forgot to mention that Scott also lanced an abscess on a older teenage female. It was under her armpit, likely caused by a sebaceous gland getting clogged. It was...yummy. :p Unfortunately with abscesses, it is very hard to numb it because of how deep it goes and how the abscess is formed. I think she was in a significant amount of pain. The rest of the day passed in relative peace with Scott and Grace and we stopped around 3:30 when we ran out of patients. I stayed in the office for another hour or so checking email, then decided to work on the sonogram. Earlier in the day, Scott had expressed a desire to see if we could connect the sonogram to a computer in order to at least take pictures if not do a video feed to a radiologist or tech in the States. I worked on trying to get that set up for about an hour with no luck. The sonogram machine was really intended only to have an output to a larger screen, not to connect to a computer. The only thing I found online regarding connecting to a computer was the ability (with software) to download hi-resolution pictures to the computer. The software likely came with the unit when it was new, but who knows where that stuff is now.
We have 8 visitors not including the Wilson family. They are just staying the night. A fellow named Chuck has a ministry called Truth Ministries and he brings teams short term (often just a few days) to Haiti. They stayed last night at the Trueloves and staying tonight with us. Tomorrow, Steve will bring them down to Mole so they can fly out. That makes for a rather full house, and of course tonight would be my night for dish duty. Joe and I did the dishes (I found out he is 13, not 12) and Grace was kind enough to help out drying and putting them away. Doing dishes for 18 people is not a easy chore. :p We had pizza and coke tonight, which was soooo good. Yummy!!
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After dinner and dishes, Scott and I went down to the clinic so he could do a bit more computer work. Also took one of the couples that are here as guests so they could send an email or something too. I slept, jounaled, emailed, facebooked, and played boggle on my iPod. Quite a productive evening. :-D
The Wilson kids, Grace, Betsy, and I played Dutch Blitz again tonight. The Wilson kids are getting better at the game and hopefully will provide much competition.
Mmm...guess I should take a shower and head for bed.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
An Experiment
So I'm rather tempted to just copy and paste my journal into a blog post. Since I journal every night, this would make blogging considerably easier, as I would not have to dedicate the time to coming down to the clinic and typing up a blog post. So...here goes. ;)
07.13.2010 - Tuesday
9:20PM
Steve and I put up fence on the west side of the compound today. In the morning, we got everything together and stretched out the chain-link, making sure it was long enough. Then Steve welded one end, and attached a board/metal tongue to the far end, attaching it to the truck winch and pulling it mostly tight. By then, it was time for lunch. After lunch, we continued working on the fence, getting it stretched as much as possible and then arc-welding it to the re-bar coming out of the concrete wall.
Once we got the fence up and welded at both ends, we called it good and packed up the welding tools. At some point, Steve will pour a couple of concrete posts along the fence and weld the fence to it there too. Steve then had me use a pick and break up an area of ground that was used to mix concrete and still had a layer of the material hardened on the ground. I have not used a pick in a long time, and I got worn out quite quickly. Steve and I contemplated on the practicality and usefulness of being short compared to the aesthetic-ness of being tall.
Around 3:15, Faith asked me if I could go down and look at one of their net books (an HP mini) that wasn't connecting to the internet. I worked on it for about an hour before the internet appeared to fail altogether. I will have to work on it again tomorrow, after the hospital people get done with it. Basically, MSN was installed and then un-installed along with Norton Anti-Virus. Windows Support indicated that there is often something called “SYMTDI” that needs to be deleted from the registry before the internet will work. I could not locate that file, and so am attempting to look for other things that are wrong. So far, the only thing I can see is that the DHCP Client and WZC don't automatically start upon Windows start-up. . . but even when I turn them to automatic and turn them on, it still won't connect. But at that point the internet started to get flaky. I will go back tomorrow and finish up on them. If I have time, that is, because the Wilson's are coming tomorrow, and I don't know if I will have time to actually get anything done.
We played Poker tonight. I decided to go all in on a two pair jack high, and actually won the pot! I finished with 240, and Faith was in second (she folded on the last hand) with 168. I was pretty excited and giggly for a while after that. Lol
07.14.2010 - Wednesday
7:50 PM
Today was a pretty decent day. :) In the morning, after breakfast and getting dressed, I went down to the clinic and worked a bit more on the HP Mini. It's weird. Sometimes I'll boot it up and the DHCP client won't start automatically and so the computer won't connect to the internet. Upon starting the Client manually, the Mini connected to the network and everything was fine. . . except for the fact that Internet Explorer would not open about 70% of the time. The DHCP Client started automatically about half the time, and some of those times IE would open too. I'm really not sure what else to do with it now. If it was my computer, I'd probably do a repair reinstall and see if that helped anything. But it is not my computer, and since it's refurbished, I don't even know if it has the root directory that contains the reinstall or repair files, so . . .
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9:15PM
About 10:30, I stopped working on the net books and came back up to the house to get ready to go with Steve. We were going to pick up the Wilson family from Mole St. Nicholas. They were being flown in by MAF to the airstrip down there. We left at 11:00 and got down to the airstrip around 12:30 or so. Since the flight was not expected to come in until around 1:30, we went to the end of the airstrip and a little past it to the ocean. There was an incredible gale coming in off the water, and the waves were all white-capped. It was pretty awesome. Hard to hear someone talk though. After we stood there for a bit, we went back up to the airstrip to wait for the plane. Steve and I talked for a while about Catholicism and the problems and non-problems with it. I hadn't thought about it, but the early church, from the 4th century onwards, was basically Catholic. There was no other 'Church' of the time. If you came to Christ from the 4th century at least until the Eastern Orthodox Church was established, you very likely came to Him within the Catholic church. That was something I'd never thought about before. We also discussed (on the drive down, really) whether God is in control of the world, how we define Evil when perhaps to God it is Good, defining 'control' and 'allowance', etc. It was an interesting conversation that leaves me somehow eager to return to the States and discuss it again with Mrs. H. We've had some good conversations, and I would be interested in again pursuing the debate.
Plane got in on/around time, and we got the Wilson family loaded up. There are two girls and one boy in the family. Chalice is 16, Mikayla is 14, and Joe is. . . 12? I think. Mr and Mrs Wilson are both doctors. Mrs Wilson and her two daughters rode up front with Steve and Joe and Scott rode on the top of the truck while I rode on the bumper. After 45 minutes or so, Scott came down on the bumper with me and Joe moved inside the back of the truck. Scott and I talked for quite a while, discussing everything from our Testimonies to my appendectomy.
Tomorrow I am hoping to work with Scott in the clinic. We'll see how that goes.
A little while after we got back from Mole, I went down to the clinic to get my net book that I'd left down there and to check and return emails. After a while Scott and Steve came down. Steve gave Scott a tour of the clinic. The Wilsons have been here before, but Scott wanted a refresher on where things were. After the tour, Scott came and sat down in the office with me to work on the computer for a bit. We spent a fair amount of time there before a storm moved in and Scott lost the signal on his internet. Grace came down about that time with a couple of unbrellas for us. Turned out we didn't need them, as the rain let up enough for us to walk back to the house in relative peace.
The Wilsons brought a basketball, and we ended up playing some for a while. It rained after we'd been out there for half an hour, and while the rest of the young people kept playing with the ball, I stepped under a covered porch, as I don't much like rain and wetness. :p People apparently got their fair share of rain, and when the storm had passed over, everyone came inside. Spoons, Mafia, and Dutch Blitz was played until 8:30 or so, at which point the Wilsons went to their house (the Byer's old house) and to take showers and hit the sack. I'm meeting Scott at 7:00 tomorrow to go down to the clinic so he can work on his computer a bit more before the morning rush starts. Speaking of which, I should go to bed . . .
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So there you go! There is a taste of both my journal and a couple of days in the life of yours truly! Let me know if this is an okay blogging style, or if you would prefer something else. :)
- Josiah
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