Not Good Soup

Oh my goodness we had to get up sooooo early this morning because we had a two hour drive!! We got to this adorable, tiny church at a reasonable hour after a bumpy road. The medical student said she thought we were going to fly up into space after one bump!!

This church was so pretty! But since it was quite small, we were …curious… to see where all of the equipment would go. My translator went to find our testing room while I unloaded the pharmacy from the van. She came back with this look on her face and said “don’t freak out” (great start forsure 😆) we then went through the garden, past the #1 outhouse (if you wanted to go #2, that one was in a different place), to this very small shack. It couldn’t have been more than 12 feet long and six feet wide. It had a couch and two tables inside and someone appeared to be living there.

They said this is where the ECG will be and started clearing out all the clothing and dinnerware and vases!! The pastor told us that a refugee from an occupied territory is currently living in this home, but is letting us use it for the day. Wow! Just so kind!! At that point I didn’t care what it looked like, I was honored and humbled to be able to use his space.

The second problem is pretty common to Europe: he was a smoker 🤢 so the whole room smelled like nicotine baking in the morning sun — no fans, or airflow really, and lots of fabric furniture, curtains, and wallpaper marinating… definitely got a bad headache from being in there and my clothes smell like cigarettes. Hopefully my scrub shirt that I was planning on rewearing tomorrow dries in time!!

We had a slower morning, which I was grateful for, because the trek to and from the rooms was confusing and long so I liked being able to walk my patients over instead of having them be sent to sit in the sun to wait. We did a few ECGs (and somehow got lead 3 to finally trace for the first time this whole trip! Explain that…) quite a lot of cholesterols and glucoses, the first hemoglobin of the trip, and a urine test. I think that makes today the first time I used all of our testing equipment.

We also found a much better system for applying jelly to the stickers. Instead of a q-tip, we got a saline flush (like a syringe full of salt water) and obviously ran around the hostel spraying each other with the water to empty it ;)

We then filled the syringe with the ultrasound jelly and just squeezed a little “flower,” as Kirk called it, onto each sticker. The leads were looking sooooo much better after that! But it did use way more jelly so we ended up buying more at the pharmacy tonight. A whopping $2 for 2 bottles 😆

So equipment was working well, patients were being seen efficiently, no one was getting lost, and it even rained lightly which cooled it off in my room! Such a perfect day! What could go wrong?

Soup….

I will say, it is the best tasting soup I have ever had in my entire life!! I don’t know what was in it (we checked, no fish) but it was delicious and deadly… my throat started to close real fast! I took two Benadryls, grabbed my epi pen and went to Kirk’s office where he started shoving all kinds of things in my mouth! I really don’t know what medicine he gave me, but at one point I’m pretty sure I drank a medication that is typically given through an IV 😆

Whatever the cocktail (that he uses all the time as an ER doctor, don’t worry. I was not a guinea pig) worked wondrously and the allergy shut down real quick! The biggest damage done I think is that the med student was kind of having a meltdown because she was scared for me :/

All hands on deck for Shawna’s ✨drama✨

But crisis averted, we went back to business as usual. No resurfacing at all or anything. And I still don’t know what was in that delicious soup…

Near the end of the day, I was running some tests on the cook and she totally thought she killed me so that was a fun conversation — we both felt so bad!!!

A few patient stories I will leave you with today and then also a verse that has been on our hearts this whole trip.

First, one of the men I saw was talking about his life, as you do, and shared that in the 70s (I think?) he moved to Ukraine as a refugee from Latvia. From what I understood, he fled from Latvia to escape the Soviet rule? Well then he ended up in Afghanistan fighting with the other side. In the middle of that, both his parents died while he was deployed. And most recently, he became a refugee from an occupied region. He lost his home to a bombing and his city to occupation. I cannot even imagine being a refugee once or fighting in a war, and yet this man is a double-refugee and a war vet. And he has the scars to prove it. But still so kind. So gentle. And so touched that we were there to love on him.

Another man who fled from occupation was a beekeeper and he said the thing he missed most was his honey from his bees. He was so sad to leave his colony at home.

Finally, the pastor was my second-to-last patient of the day and he was a hoot!! My translator was helping with some medication instructions but he seemed fine to mime our way through the ECG. So I mimed taking this shirt off and patted the pillow on the couch and then patted my head, trying to tell him which direction to lay down. He giggled a bit and got this look in his eye and then took of his shirt, jumped on the couch and literally posed like Rose in titanic and said something that I can only assume meant “paint me like one of your French girls”

He cracked himself up! Which cracked me up and it was just chaos for a bit 😆 but we got his ecg done with little effort and sent him on his way.

Each of these clinics has been such a range of emotions and high highs and low lows. Mallory brought up a verse that’s been on her heart this whole trip and I just want to share it with you now. It’s Psalm 3:

“O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people! Selah”

While there are so many beautiful parts of this verse and the Bible geek in me wants to dissect it for hours, one angle I want to share with you has to do with the fields upon fields of sunflowers we pass every day to get to clinic. Tall, strong, bright flowers standing in unison gazing towards the Son every day. Their yellow petals contrasted against the blue sky (eh? Blue and yellow??)

They remind me of these people. And more so, look at the verse!!!

It talks about God being a shield about His people: I just feel like sunflowers and shields are cousins, don’t ask questions ;)

It says that God lifts their heads each morning: just like how the sunflowers’ faces get lifted towards the Sun every morning.

They wake each morning for the Lord sustained them.

And they reflect the glory of God in so many of my interactions with them! It’s hard to explain, but like everything this trip, deeply emotional.

Please join me in praying for God’s sunflowers in this country: that they would continue to lift their faces towards Him and stand together during adversity.