Thursday, November 18, 2010

Jesus wept


Running a 150 bed ICU with a skeleton crew, in the dirt, under tarps, in blistering temperatures. Starting two intraosseous lines and one intravenouss line in the same infant. Prepping a fresh corpse. Setting up cots for a steady stream of critically ill patients arriving one right after the other. Working  without understanding the language. Watching as patients repeatedly fill the basins strategically placed under their beds with rice water. These are daily realities.
To say this work is demanding is an understatement. Most of us push through our shift, not thinking about the reality of the challenges and conditions before us.
We seem to take turns letting down our guard and feeling the impact of what we are living through.
When that happens, we cry together. Like when Lazarus died. Jesus wept. But not when He heard the news of his death; He wept when he witnessed Mary's grief.
I ate breakfast this morning with Dr. Tom Wood, staff epidemiologist with Samaritan's Purse. He was on the team that developed oral rehydration solution in 1963 while stationed in the Philippines with the Navy. His team developed ORS for the annual outbreaks of El Toro, the same strain of cholera attacking Haiti. He told me this morning according to the UN,  an acceptable mortality rate in a Cholera Treatment Center is 5%. He then told me that our mortality rate is 0.7%. 
This could only be possible with God! 
So, we are Jesus to each other and we remember that He has won the battle.