Take Your Father to Work Day

In February of 2012, I made a promise to my oldest daughter Jessica.  My intent was to fulfill that promise before we left Uganda in July of 2012.  To my shame, I failed.  On Monday, I finally made good, as I accompanied her (and Joline and the Gregstons) to work.

About five years ago, my son Joshua had surgery on his ear to remove some scar tissue that had accumulated from prior surgeries.  Due to a genetic anomaly (must have been from my wife’s side), the upper wall of Joshua’s ear canal was missing a patch of bone.  This hole exposed a small portion of the sack holding his brain fluid to the surgeon’s tool that was scraping the inside of his ear canal (behind the ear drum).  As a consequence, the sack was punctured and Joshua started leaking brain fluid through his ear.  This negative development landed Joshua in pediatric intensive care for a few very tense days.

Along with the rest of the family, Jessica, who was about thirteen at the time, spent lots of time in the hospital with her little brother.  She watched the pediatric nurses do their thing with such grace and professionalism that she developed a secret desire to become one of them when she grew up.

But there was one small problem.  Her aversion to needles dwarfed my aversion to heights, and that is saying something.

I clearly remember accompanying her to an appointment to have her blood drawn at around that time.  Jessica was so irrationally afraid of the appointment that Joline exercised her prerogative to send me with Jessica, rather than accompanying her herself.  Jessica cried most of the way to the appointment, and shrieked in excruciating pain when the nurse . . . swabbed her arm before inserting the needle.

“Um, Jessica?  That was a soft rub with cotton.  You think that hurt, just wait for the fat needle coming your direction.  You need to quit your crying . . . or I’ll give you something to cry about.”  I was quite adept at compassion in those days.

After a while, Jessica gave up on her dream of being a pediatric nurse because she couldn’t fathom the idea of interacting with needles – on either the giving or receiving end.

Fast forward to February of 2012.

Joline and the kids were planning to work with Sixty Feet in a juvenile remand home during the six months we were here in Uganda, but fate (providence) intervened.  God closed the door on that opportunity and opened another one.  We had met our Twin Family (the Gregstons) the prior month, who were also going to be in Uganda for the same six months we were there.  They graciously invited Joline and the kids to join them on their mobile medical clinics.

At the end of the first week, a Ugandan doctor declared that Jessica and Jake Gregston (both 16 at the time) would need to learn to draw and test blood for HIV and Malaria.  Jessica’s feeble protests were ignored.  To everyone’s surprise – especially her own – she faced her deepest fears and conquered them.  She credits God for giving her the momentary courage it took to pick up the needle the first time and just go with it.

Given my past interactions with Jessica and needles, I was quite stunned to learn of her leap of faith.  I was also quite concerned to hear she was interacting with infected blood, which required my own leap of faith not to object.  This opportunity she was given to get involved in providing medical care to children in need reawakened her long-suppressed dream of being a pediatric nurse.  She absolutely thrived in the pharmacy and blood lab in these daily clinics.  She was so proud of herself and wanted to show her daddy how far she had come.

This all brings me to the promise I made.

After a few weeks in the clinic, Jessica asked me if I would be able to accompany her and the Gregstons on a medical clinic one day before we left Uganda in 2012.  “Of course, I will,” I promised.  But my work was also busy, so I pushed it off until the last week.  I was all scheduled to go, but then the clinic was cancelled due to something beyond anyone’s control.

Anyone who has broken a promise to a child knows how crappy it feels, especially for something as important to the child as this was to Jessica.  She really wanted to show me what she and the others did all day while I was working with the courts.

Yesterday was spent on Redemption Island in the middle of Lake Victoria.

OK, it was actually wasn’t called Redemption Island.  In fact, it wasn’t even an island, but a peninsula.  But we did take a boat there and it did provide me much needed redemption.

The morning started out with a boat launch from Fish Central in Gaba.  I hate fish.  I hate the taste of fish, the smell of fish, and the sight of fish.  Stomach acid migrates northward even when I type the word.  In fact, my iPhone has an app that changes the word “fish” to “chicken” whenever I type it.

While we waited at the launching point, fish odor washed over me like making me vomit was its job.  I held breakfast down, though, but not without some effort at pretending that the fish were simply water chickens.  I knew it was a bad sign when the captain of S.S. Rickety Spit was bailing water as we stepped into the boat.  His 30 hp motor coughed and sputtered as it tried to push forward the 30-foot wooden craft that appeared to have been fastened together with bailing wire and duct tape during the Amin regime.  At least we had life jackets for the thirty-minute putter across the murky waves.  Oh wait.  No life jackets.

In the boat on the way to the clinic

Fortunately, we made it across without incident, though my back filed a motion for reconsideration when I was told that the ride back would be much choppier.

The patient queue grew at the sight of the arrival of eight mzungus carrying plastic trunks.  The Royal “We” set up the clinic near the shore in a church that made the boat look spanking new and a work of fine craftsmanship.  I watched and tried not to get in the way as a registration “desk,” a pharmacy, an examination “room,” and a blood lab were established.  Within a few minutes, I reached my highest and best use as I planted myself next to Joline at the registration desk.  One of the three Ugandan nurses joining us for the clinic was the first intake person.  She spoke to the patients in their local language and wrote down their name, age, and gender (not always immediately obvious with kids, given the nearly uniformly shaved heads and failure to observe gender-specific clothing rules) on a registration sheet the patients would carry with them as they moved from station to station.  She then handed this form to Joline, who entered the vital information in the log book and then handed it back to the patient after I finished my highly important jobs.  My jobs were to weigh and de-worm them.

Little known fact – those who don’t speak your language will be able to understand you if you speak slowly and loudly, at least that is what I read on the internet and it sounded good to me.  So I accomplished my first task by pointing to the scale and saying, “P-L-E-A-S-E  S-T-A-N-D  H-E-R-E.”  It must have worked because it only took a few words in Luganda from the nurse for them to confirm they understood what I meant the first time, because after she spoke to them, they dutifully stepped on the scale.  For the babies, I used my superhuman subtraction skills to figure out that if the mother weighed 77 kilos with the baby, and 70 kilos without the baby, the baby must weigh 7 kilos.  It is a good thing they brought me to the clinic that day because they would have been flummoxed without me running the weighing station.

I accomplished my de-worming duties without even wearing gloves.  Fearlessly, I reached in deep (sometimes with my entire hand), felt around until I pinched what I was after between my thumb and middle finger (I usually couldn’t get the kind of grasp I needed using my index finger), and then tugged.  Most of the time, it came out whole.  A few times I only got half.  And a few times I had to physically break in half what I had removed myself.  With a smile, I handed the de-worming pill I had retrieved from the jug-sized pill bottle and handed it to the patient.   “Gaya,” I said, which I was told means “chew.”  Those six and older got a full pill, and those between one and three got a half.

After mastering the art of weighing and de-worming (it took me less than an hour to get this down), I decided to share my considerable talents with the pharmaceutical team, which was being co-run by Jessica and Jake.  Dr. Gregston and Dr. Joseph (Ugandan) were seeing patients and then practicing the lost art of writing ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on the patients’ registration forms.  Jessica and Jake acted as the interpreters as they and two other Americans on the team filled the prescriptions.

After a few minutes of watching, I jumped in.  After a few minutes of counting pills, I realized I had missed my calling by going into law.  Counting pills is actually fun, especially when you get to use the pill-counting tray and a little spatula to divide them into piles of five.

“I need thirty Amoxicillin,” came the call.

5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 – “Here they are,” I would say.  And I was pretty “stat” about getting them counted.  I could have done that all day.

Dealing Drugs, Uganda Style, with Jessica

But my reverie was rudely interrupted by a sick lady in her late thirties whom the doctors feared might be HIV positive.  I followed Jessica and Jake over to the make-shift “blood lab,” which consisted of a bench near the church doorway so the outside light could shine in.

“Shouldn’t I glove up, also?” I asked as they put on rubber gloves and prepared the needle and testing strip.  Their annoyed stares wordlessly answered my question.

I couldn’t help myself from delivering repeated warnings to Jessica to “be careful” and “watch the needle – it has a sharp point” as she effortlessly found a good vein in her crook of the nervous patient’s elbow, cleaned the insertion area, inserted the needle, withdrew the blood, and squeezed a bit onto the test strip Jake had prepared.

My kids inherited my lack of musical talent, so this was our version of me being the proud papa at a piano recital.

“How long does it take before we know the results?” I asked as I shined my phone’s flash light on the test strip inside the dark church.

“About ten minutes,” Jake responded.

“What am I looking for?” I asked.

“A single line in the first area would be a positive test, which would be a negative result.”

“Got it.  Let’s pray for a negative test and a positive result.”

I watched, and watched, and watched.  No line!  Jessica had the pleasure of informing the patient she had tested negatively.  The patient clapped with delight after the translator relayed the news.  Unfortunately, Jessica has had to deliver the opposite news to others along the way.

By the end of the day, just under 200 patients had been seen and treated.  This was just one day of six weeks this summer (and six months last year) for the Gregstons as they serve those in greatest need here.  You can follow along with their life-changing work at www.dueunto.com.  Less importantly, though still very important to me, I had a chance to spend the day with my daughter participating with her in what has become her chosen occupation.  Time will tell whether she pursues a medical degree or whether she focuses on the nursing she dreamt of doing so many years ago.

This wonderful day, however, ended rather like it started.  The restaurant where we ate served only fish and chips.  The literally had nothing else.  I ate a plate of chips and held my nose as the others ate what I kept telling myself was water chicken.

Still no Chief Justice, though the chatter is increasing about what will be done to resolve this mounting crisis.