I had one of those days today, so I thought I’d write about it. This post will be more “medical” than usual.
I saw a lady today in clinic who has been treated for at least 10 years for a “hepatoma,” that is, a growth in her liver. This diagnosis was made because she had an enlarged liver- no assessments, no labs, no nothing. For the past year she has been paying a small fee frequently to go to a nearby mission-run clinic. Medical records in PNG are kept by the patient in the form of a small booklet that they carry around with them. Obviously, that can be risky, to say the least. Looking through this lady’s book today I could see that each time she went to other clinics, the history and diagnosis were all rolled into one each time with the phrase “known hepatoma.” Apparently she came to the hospital where I work because that other clinic told her that they had no medicine that would help her. So she was screened by the nurses in the outpatient building and diagnosed with “known hepatoma.” The MD up in that building looked at her book and just sent her to me for an ultrasound of the abdomen (one of my routine duties.)
But here’s the problem. As soon as this thin little lady walked through the door I could see pulsations in her neck. My nurse was just going to write her on the register as an ultrasound. I said “Nope. Sign her up as my patient and do vital signs. This lady has a bad heart.” Right off the bat we got an ECG. This is it. Her heart was roaring and irregular, and her lungs were full of water. Yes, it is true that her liver was large, but that was because her heart is barely working. So for all these years she has been told she had a tumor on her liver, and no one was surprised that over 10 years that didn’t change. Meanwhile, although occasionally someone would take her blood pressure, no one noticed that her heart was not beating regularly.
I also took an x-ray of her chest, just to see how big her heart was. As you can see, it is more of a large water balloon. I don’t really have a way of measuring to get a real number, but it is obvious that she has very little heart function left. I wandered around the clinic “lecturing” no one in particular about the horrific and careless malpractice that has let this poor lady suffer for many years, and who is now- for the most part- beyond rescue. I did give her medicine that should significantly reduce her suffering, but it is too late for her heart.
My prayer is that somehow the Lord would be merciful to her to give her a little more time; and that He would open her eyes to her greater danger of trying to save herself, and to collapse completely onto Christ Who died for her. There is no hope for “culture” anywhere. I am so grateful to have been raised in a culture where health care workers, for the most part, actually care. That is virtually unheard of here, and is not expected. The health care system here works exactly how it was designed: that is to get as much from governments (mostly foreign) then divert most goods and money into personal gain. And lest I think my culture is somehow better, I hear stories that reveal that this background greed is prevalent in mankind, no matter how “refined” the culture. We all have terminal heart conditions: and may only be saved from eternal destruction by the only Savior: Jesus the Christ.
