Thanksgiving Certainly "Delivered"

Holy smokes, people. You will not believe what I got to do for Thanksgiving!!

I mentioned in my last post that I got the opportunity to tour a hospital in Santa Cruz with a nurse who I met a few weeks ago. What I didn't know was that my friend is not just a nurse but the head pediatric doctor in the maternity ward. That's right. The head honcho!

Before I go much further, I should explain that labor/delivery/prenatal care has always been an interest of mine. No, really ALWAYS. Way back in the day, my favorite episode of Sesame Street was when the Robinson family had a baby and my siblings would scream in horror when I watched A Baby Story on TLC. "Please not a c-section!" my five year old brother would wail (What five year old boy even knows what a c-section is? Sorry Joe!). So basically, I was out of my mind excited to get to go to this hospital and experience the action in real life!

That said, my expectation for the day was this: Watch a lot of things through glass windows. Maybe get to actually have some patient interactions. And that was about it.

My expectations were blown out of the water. Completely.

My first hint that I would be doing a whole lot more than observing was when Dr. Carmiña handed me a white nurse's uniform. "Cool, I'm playing dress-up!" I thought. But when we arrive at the hospital, she lets me follow her around as she examines all the newborns -eighty newborns. There were about seven moms to each room (Seven!) and no curtains giving anyone any privacy. While the hospital was obviously old (think wrought-iron beds and stark white walls) it was pretty clean, although it was obvious that this was where the poorest of the poor come to give birth.

Sarah Groves wrote a song and the lyrics are as follows:

I saw what I saw and I can't forget it.
I heard what I heard and I can't go back
Something on the road, cuts me to the soul.
Your pain has changed me.
Your dream inspires 
Your face a memory 
Your hope a fire
Your courage asks me what I am afraid of
And what I know of God.

And that's exactly how I felt while at the hospital. I saw beautiful moments of motherly love and tender care of the world's newest members. Precious twin baby girls with the thickest, softest baby hair. Mommas nursing for the first time or comforting their little ones after getting their blood drawn. A lot of anxious, fish out of water, new dads. The proudest grandparents.

But a lot was also completely heart wrenching. The fourteen year old little mamas (yes, there was more than one) that are so unprepared that they don't even have diapers. The mom with Huntingtons disease that can barely control her body enough to breastfeed and another young mom weeping with postpartum depression. Mommas that can't give the daddy's name on the birth certificate because they were raped and babies no bigger than my hand covered in wires and tubes...I saw what I saw and I can't forget it.

Life can be so beautiful and so awful.
                                                                        ---

I'm having a once in a lifetime experience helping Dr. Carmiña when the most freaking embarrassing moment of my entire life happens. All of a sudden I start to feel horrible. My stomach is flippity flopping and my limbs feel like million pounds. And then I start to BLACK OUT. I can feel my knees buckling so I clutch the nearest table thinking "Well, I guess a hospital is probably one of the safest places to pass out." Dr. Carmiña realizes what is happening and guides me to a chair. After I'm seated and drinking some juice, I immediately feel much better -except for being completely humiliated in a room full of woman who have just been through the worst pain in their lives. Are they collapsing? Oh no, it's the wimpy gringa who is passing out -for no reason!

I still don't know why that happened. I'm not queasy around blood or hospitals and I'd eaten breakfast that morning too. I hadn't even seen the worst of it at this point. Maybe I was just too excited? Not sure. Thanks a lot, body :(

After I recover (physically, mentally I am forever shamed), I get to help one of the nurses give all eighty infants their TB vaccinations. This was one of my favorite things even though we made all of them scream their poor little hearts out, it just meant I got to cuddle them afterward.

That afternoon, Dr. Carmiña told me that she was assisting during a cesarean and asked if I wanted to attend! HECK YES was my answer. Once again, I'm thinking looking through a glass window is all that I'm going to be able to do but when we get there, I get handed a pair of scrubs, a face mask, and those little plastic booties that go over your shoes. I am freaking out from excitement but also worried, remembering that my body apparently HATES me and is completely unreliable. "If I pass out during this delivery, I will never forgive myself," I'm thinking as I step into the operating room.

But I don't pass out, in fact I don't even flinch as I see EVERYTHING. I will save you the gory details but I saw it all. My cheeks were hurting from smiling as they pull out a baby girl and I witness her first breath. I get to be the second person in the whole world to hold her, less that five minutes old. I whisper "bienvenidos chiquitinga" (welcome little one) when she opens her eyes and looks at me. And I can't decide whether to laugh or cry so I sorta do both.

And I could have been eating turkey! Best, most unforgettable Thanksgiving day ever!!!!!

Many thanks to Dr. Carmiña for letting me tag along with her. You truly gave me the world this week.

Struggle with Struggle

"Ours is a planet of polarity: the poor and the rich; the hungry and the well fed; the healthy and the terminally ill. Within these apparent contradictions we struggle for meaning. For dignity. For equality. The human story is built into this struggle...Yes, humanity's song is the absurd, the tragic, the comic; the profane and the beautiful; the fallen and the redeemed. Our society is fraught with inconsistencies and absurdities...The highs and lows, the dark and the light. This is the absurdity of our bipolar existence. Stretched thin between the dichotomy of death and breath, ashes and cash, pain and beauty. The scope of it all is enough to drive a man crazy. " -- Jon Foreman, in the article "Vice Verses: Making Art Out of Tension."

Today was a harder day in el campo, visiting the neighborhood of Paraiso. Paraiso means "paradise" but in this neighborhood, things are not what most of us consider to be paradise. I've often heard people say, after seeing someone living in poverty, "I learned to be happy without material things because these people just radiate joy and happiness." I think I've said this myself. And we're content with that because we've put a band-aid on the gaping wound of poverty, calling it "happiness despite."

But what do you do when the people aren't happy? When they are tired and defeated. When their baby is sick and the last cow just died. When they don't want to invite you into their homes because they're ashamed because they know you're at the other end of the dichotomy. The FAR end. And the truth is, you're ashamed too because "the scope of it all is enough to drive a man crazy."

I don't doubt God's plan but I don't claim to understand it either. Why was I given what I was? My family, my house, my car, my education? If you have an easy answer, I honestly don't want to hear it because this answer isn't easy. It can't be easy when the lives of some people are so hard.

I think we have to be ok with not knowing what God was planning when it looks like He divided the pie unequally, unjustly. I think where Christians run into trouble is when we try to answer these questions too quickly. I think we undermine peoples' suffering when we do that. We need to take the time to wrestle those answers out, to struggle with why people struggle.

Yikes, sorry folks. That may have been a downer. I'm just trying to do Bolivia justice.

Deep breath...publish.