We are so thankful for your support, in prayer and financially! Your prayers help to protect us and to make our work more effective. And without the financial support given by those of you whom the Lord leads, our clinic would close and we wouldn't be able to serve the poor. We are very grateful for both!
This has been another busy month! The clinic has had lots of students and volunteers this last month. Dr. Steve Smith and his wife, Leanne, as well as a premed student from Washington State helped every afternoon for one week. Two medical students from University of Minnesota-Duluth also spent two weeks earlier in the month, as well as two Romanian medical students, Floriana and Tabita. We've also had a student nurse for 3 weeks and another one starts tomorrow. Ligia, our only resident in Family Medicine so far this year, is very motivated to learn and enjoys getting some actual "hands on" experience, instead of just watching. But now she will be at another clinic for 3 weeks and then studies for her exams in October. She wants to come back after her exams. Gabi, Ruxi and Dragos are getting more and more patients of their own.
We always have interesting patients, but a most unusual case was a 5 year old boy who was mauled by a lion! (Romania's in Europe, not Africa!) He was at a zoo with his parents and 2 brothers. The guard rails weren't adequate and the boy got too close and the lion grabbed him and pulled him toward the cage! They rescued the boy but he had to be hospitalized for several days and the large wounds on his leg were sutured. They came from their city 6 hours away to see Milt, once the boy was discharged from the hospital, after many phone conversations during his hospitalization. He had an excellent surgeon in Targu Mures, who explained more than the average Romanian doctor. The boy will be fine, but will need some plastic surgery at some point.
Linda had a more exasperating situation this weekend in her role as the Embassy doctor. A patient was hospitalized after a car accident. Once in the hospital, only the official hospital doctors have the right to write orders for any patient, so Linda had no control over the care the patient was receiving. She can accept that. The exasperating part was that the patient was in a private unit of the Emergency Hospital, where the care and comfort is generally better than anywhere else, but each time Linda called to find out how the patient was doing the nurses would give her absolutely no information at all! When Linda asked for the doctor's phone number, the nurse gave her the incorrect number and insisted it was the right number even when Linda told her it had too many digits! (It was the wrong number.) Thankfully, when Linda finally reached the patient's phone, she was improving a bit.
We have had a remodeling job in process for the 3 weeks which finally was finished on Thursday. We now have our own small gas furnace, the size of a large carry-on suitcase (in the balcony part of the living room) with a water pipe going to it from a meter under the kitchen sink and then pipes going from it to each room's radiator, plus to the kitchen and bathroom sinks for hot water. The workers did a pretty nice job. Now, we will pay only for the hot water we actually use and the heat we use in the winter. In the past, our heating bill was based on our apartment size, even though we had our radiators closed most of the time, and our water bill on the number of people in our apartment. Another benefit is that this month, when our part of town has the annual "revizie"--the cleaning of the hot water pipes, meaning there is no hot water for anyone for 2-3 weeks, having our own system means we will have hot water (or rather, the doctors who are staying in our apartment during part of our absence will have hot water.) We could tell you about all the bureaucracy involved in doing remodeling and putting in a "central termica", but then there wouldn't be room to say anything else in this letter! :>)
We do have 2 doctors who are coming to work in our clinic during our absence, each for a week! Dr. Paula Wood will be arriving the day after we leave and will stay for a week. Dr. Sam Massey and his wife will come a week before we return and will work that last week. Both have done short term medical mission work with Baptist teams in Romania in the past. Regarding the Embassy work, there is a temporary nurse practitioner coming, starting next Thursday. She will be working for 6 weeks. Hopefully, the new "permanent" person will be coming soon after she leaves!
Kara Kelley came back from the States in June with her foot quite a bit better. Now her mission has transferred her to work with another nurse in Ploiesti, an hour's drive north of here. She will be working in the city and in villages nearby. She has been a big help to us and we will miss her! We wish her all the Lord's blessings in her new ministry!
Tomorrow, at 4:30am we head to the airport for our trip back to the States. Part of it will actually be vacation! We're taking Linda's mother with us to Hawaii where we will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary! Linda's mom is 87 this year! The rest of the time we'll be in Minnesota. Our main job is trying to obtain all the medical supplies that we need, that we are unable to find in Romania, for the least money possible. Would you believe that alcohol swabs cannot be purchased in Romania? They don't exist here! Neither do cotton balls, except for the non-cotton ones that are sold with cosmetics. And lots of other things that we have searched and searched for, unsuccessfully. Some things used to be available here, but now are no longer availabe, such as chlorhexidine, a surgical scrub soap. We'll also have a little time to see friends and family, as well as doing routine medical checks, etc.
Linda's been a little sick this last 3 days, with a "stomach flu", and we'd appreciate your prayers that she wouldn't have more trouble during the flight home.
We want to thank you again for your prayers and your financial support. We appreciate your partnership with us in serving the people of Romania in Christ's name!