When.

(I wrote this on Saturday, but the internet is touch and go so this is the first I've been able to post it)

I hereby officially declare that I am saying “when”.

I am sore to the touch, and ambling around like an old man after the clinic we had today. 250 total children, who arrived by the never-ending busload with dirty little ear canals. Every time I looked outside searching for a light at the end of the tunnel it seemed as though even MORE inquisitive little faces would peer around the doorway anxiously wanting to get in Grace Evangelical Church.

Being the person who took every single little patient’s vitals with an ear thermometer and the assistant at the ear wash station I thought a lot today about dirty little ears. Although I learned a contradiction to my cultural hygienic upbringing - dirty ears are healthy ears. Acidic wax keeps us from getting bugs in our ears as well as bacteria that cause ear infections. Thus unless the wax is causing pain or auditory damage…it stays.

At patient number 215 I had caught up with the docs on vitals and got to sit in with a very exhausted Dr. Andy as he checked off the last few kids. With the exception of a case of Impetigo, which was routinely treated with antibiotics, we had all basically healthy kids. I would kind of laugh at the awkward silence in the sheet-walled exam rooms as the kids realized that they waited in line for 6 hrs with their cardstock “chart” only to have this guy write on it that I’m perfectly fine. And yeah, maybe today would have been a much easier and shorter day had we only seen the ones who could actually be classified as sick. But there’s beauty in healthy kids that blows finding a true ailment completely out of the water. Not to mention the benefit of giving all of these kids multivitamins, a community based prevention of worms, a sticker, a sandwich, and a day to sit and play with their friends in a house of God to find out that Jesus and these crazy Americans in the funny clothes called scrubs love them.

There hasn’t been a clinic day with 250 people in a few years; we try to cap it at 150. And this time it happened there was about half the amount of doctors available to supply the demand. So I guess it’s safe to say that God heard my prayer about exhausting our team within the very last molecule of ATP. But this is what we prayed so diligently for the opportunity to do, so the work and exhaustion is met with satisfaction and welcoming. I think we were meant to see everyone who came through those doors today, because had we not faced so much adversity with setting up these clinics I don’t think a 250 clinic with half the required staff would have gone quite so smoothly.

I will be lucky if I make it through my spaghetti dinner without falling asleep in it.