Why Did it Have to Be Like That?

Kids riding a lion!

Sometimes do you ever wonder at the little difficulties that seem to get in the way of your plans? Yesterday it felt a little bit like we were caught in the book about a horrible, no good, very bad day.

As background, we are currently in mainland Africa because in a phrase, healthcare on the islands is terrible.  So for just about everything from checkups to surgery we try to deal with it off-island.  That is the case at the moment.  We are in mainland Africa, on our way back to the islands taking care of some medical needs. Dental checkups, medical checkups and followup from Megan’s surgery were on the to-do list.

The day started out well enough. The apartment where we are staying is absolutely freezing, but we got up and made it outside, got a taxi (via a taxi app) and made it to the mall that has a pediatric clinic. The waiting room had Disney Jr. on the TV which kept our kids very occupied. Megan had to head across town to the hospital for her surgery follow-up while the kids did their initial triage—good height, good weight, no fever, everything good.  Then after a bit more waiting, the kids were next to see the doctor. 

Then things started to go wrong. First Megan was outside getting a taxi, a little chagrined when a run-down car picked her up. But once on their way, the driver turns around, tells her he doesn’t have enough gas to get to her destination and he needs her to pay in cash (not credit card like she had selected with the app) because he doesn’t have any money to buy gas. Megan ultimately ends up on the side of the road in some random part of the city, trying to get another taxi while the app stubbornly keeps selecting the bad car she just got out of.

Meanwhile our youngest turns to Tom in the waiting room and says he doesn’t feel well.  A few minutes go by and he lifts his head up, says, “Daddy, I feel sick.  I think I’m going to throw up,” and proceeds to do so—all over the floor of the waiting room.  (Amazingly, he missed both Tom’s clothes and his own.) 

Megan narrowly makes it to before her appointment time. She’s ushered through the multi-step process of waiting, then checking-in, then waiting, then paying, and then waiting to be seen. 

In the waiting room watching the overhead TV

For Tom, what was supposed to be a simple well-child checkup has turned into a sick-child appointment. Our son throws up again in the room with the doctor (this time into a bucket) and instead of milestones and routine vaccinations, the doctor is talking about blood tests and a course of antibiotics.

Meanwhile Megan is getting her scan and the technician is marveling at the number of ovarian cysts he is finding. Not encouraging.

We are messaging back and forth throughout, sending our prayers and commiseration to each other. Finally Tom makes it back to the freezing apartment with the kids with none of the errands done that he wanted to do and with our formerly “sick” child now smiling and bouncing up and down.

Megan has three more rounds of waiting, checking-in, waiting, paying, waiting, being seen— first with the doctor to talk about the scan, then at the pharmacy and then at radiology to get the scan results. On the way home she gets stuck in afternoon traffic and gets back to the apartment feeling tired and a little carsick.

We decide to do an easy dinner. A local restaurant will deliver. We make the order at 6pm so we can get the kids to bed early. Things didn’t progress smoothly. At 7:30, there is still no food. It finally arrives, rather cool, just before 8pm. 

What a day! Why couldn’t the kids have been healthy and happy? Why couldn’t Megan’s scan been all good news? Why couldn’t the food arrive hot when it was supposed to? It is enough to make you want to move to Australia, right? Well, maybe not.

And really if you learn anything from that kids’ book it’s that some days don’t go the way you want, but you also have a choice in how you process it all. Do we only see the negative? Or are we happy that our youngest threw up at the doctors (a place more than equipped to handle it) and not somewhere else? Do we remember that most of the cysts seen in Megan’s scan aren’t a concern? Are we thankful that we have a place to go to get the medical care that we need? We’re not really sure why our day turned out that way but we understand that trials of many kinds produce in us patience and perseverance. 


PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our son who was sick on vacation recovered without anyone else being sick and we were all healthy for our travels back to Africa. Our travels went smoothly and we arrived with all our bags. Our other son (who threw up in the above story) also seems to be doing all better. We are thankful that we had an opportunity to follow up with all these medical/dental concerns while we were here. A new electronic resource was released to islanders on the internet and has already gathered a following! We got to meet with two of our teammates and their parents who were visiting. It was fun to meet them!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We have been on a little it of whirlwind. Pray for a smooth transition back to the islands tomorrow. Our daughter hasn’t been feeling well today, so pray that she gets better. We will have one full day on the big island before we go back to Clove. Pray for us as we meet with our country leader and debrief several difficult things. Pray for wisdom for us as leaders. Pray for our team— the past few months have been an emotional rollercoaster for many of us. Pray for the Spirit to bring peace, joy and unity in all trials. Pray for Megan, she had a large ovarian cyst surgically removed in January but the ultrasound this week shows that the same type of cyst has regrown on the same ovary. It is still small and not causing pain, so we will try some months of medication to see if its growth can be stopped. Pray for the cyst to go away and for her to tolerate the medication well.