Call Me Шоиа

First day of clinics in the books! A huge success with so many good memories and successful stories! We saw fifty patients even though we came a half hour late because we got lost (maps get shut down on phones during air alarms so the enemy cannot use them but it makes getting places tricky sometimes!)

The church was lovely and we each had a separate room to work in! The people were kind and friendly and I cannot count how many hugs I got today. These people are the best!

My job was lab tech so I ran all of the glasses, glucose, cholesterol, hg, urine, and ecgs that were ordered. I think we did an ecg on pretty much every patient because we told them ahead of time we had a cardiologist coming on the trip. So I am super glad I pushed myself to get my ecg technician certification before this trip! Although the task of doing this many unsupervised right after finishing was daunting!!

Our machine is from 2004 so she’s a bit old and tired, but after studying the manual the previous night, I was able to get her singing without too many issues. I was worried about correctly placing leads too, but it really does start to become pretty easy. God is gracious and my first patient had visible intercostal spaces so I didn’t even have to feel for them!! (Skinny guys are awesome ;))

I am also grateful for my patients and how nicely they prepared for the clinic: since they knew they were coming to see a cardiologist, almost all of the men had already shaved their chests and ankles so I didn’t have to spend that time and (awkwardly) shave them before applying the patches. Each patient was so sweet and many of them shared their stories with me while we were getting set up. They have lived through such incredibly tough times and will unfortunately have to live through many more. It’s truly heartbreaking. I think that this is the hardest thing I’ve seen. It might be more difficult to process than malnutrition and incurable diseases for me personally.

Most of my patients were getting ecgs because of fast heart rate or palpitations that the doctors are pretty sure is chronic stress from the war. Even the previous night, most of them had not slept because of the sirens and missiles. And these are the refugees who already fled their homes because of the war, yet they’re still stuck dealing with it daily in the very physical sense. We even had a 17 year old boy with palpitations who came in. He was definitely in some kind of chronic shock state — very robotic and had trouble answering questions and looking people in the eye. The war was causing anxiety and depression spikes so bad, it was hurting his heart. We were able to give him some medication and connected him with a local pastor who will hopefully be able to bring a counselor on board as well.

Sirens were going off while we were working too, and everyone just had to keep working. Our local doctor said that if they went to the basement every time a siren went off in her home town (the town many of our refugees from today were from) they would never be able to accomplish anything.

The government here is doing a really good job of tracking all of the incoming attacks and they send messages to their citizens about exactly where things are hitting so when the sirens go off, our partners check their phones to see if we really are in any danger or if the problem is headed to the other end of town.

The government is also constantly taking out drones before they can cause damage, another reason why we are able to continue working despite the sirens.

Anyway, some cool God moments from today:

We had an extremely random assortment of glasses and only about 20-25 pairs. a bunch of different strengths and some very bold frame choices! And yet, every single time we got a pair of glasses for a patient, we found the right (or close enough to the right) strength and they all kind of suited their personalities or face shapes which in the end doesn’t really matter, but it is so nice to be able to have a tool match who you are, especially in the midst of a war that is stripping them of their identity and individuality. Such a small thing, but such a cool and personal thing God decided to do :)

On a similar note, a little explanation and then the story: we didn’t have an eye chart, just bags of different strength reading glasses. I was set up in the church library so we just grabbed a book off the shelf for them to read and started the “higher or lower” game with the glasses. So, this one lady sits down and we hand her the book and ask if she can make out letters that are blurry or if it’s just straight up lines. This helped me narrow in a little bit on big magnification or little. After we figured that out, I grabbed our only pair of 1.5s (of course, they looked so perfect on her because God is so gentle with His children when He needs to be) and picked up the book and started reading out loud.

She couldn’t finish reading though because she got a bit choked up — the words were perfectly clear for the first time in years! And her head didn’t hurt to read! She thanked us and let us know they were just perfect and then continued reading this random book on pastoral leadership! We got lots of hugs :)

Back to the ECGs, one thing that inadvertently happens is patients have to be shirtless, and some of the women were wearing dresses so we got real vulnerable real fast with some of them. Which can be intimidating with someone who speaks your language let alone some rando American!! Most of them did pretty good — a couple asked for a few seconds to calm down, others didn’t tell me ahead of time and came back tachy and so I ratted them out ;)

One lady, who seemed a bit nervous when she first walked in, said after her scan was complete and her clothes back in order, through lots of hugs and kisses said that she has never felt more comfortable and at ease with a doctor than she did with me today. 😭 how sweet are these people?! Seriously so precious.

We got back late, exhausted, and a little short tempered but ended the evening with a delightful lesson from Dr. Kirk on reading ecgs — way better than any of my other classes — and lots of laughs :)

I also spent probably 45 minutes washing ecg stickers to reuse tomorrow since we might not have enough for all our patients if we don’t. But thankfully Google came in clutch and told us that you can wash them with soap and water and they will get re-sticky! So tomorrow we will be assembling the sheets again for use on Monday at our next clinic.

Tomorrow we get to worship with our brothers and sisters here and I always look forward to that. We also have to run a few errands to pick up some things like ziplocks and razors so it will be a relatively relaxing day. We might even hit up the McDonalds because apparently it is way better here 😆