i am constant. i am near. i am peace that shatters all your secret fears.

Hello Everyone…

There are only two and a half weeks left here in Cameroon until we will travel to Sudan. My heart is growing more and more for the city of Bamenda. I feel comfortable with the people, working with the midwives, shopping in the market and soon we will leave for a new country. There is something so melancholy about leaving a culture and I am feeling like; I just haven’t had enough time here. It makes me believe that in the new creation we will be able to constantly enjoy one another’s cultures, we are made for something eternal.

I have made a new friend named Constance. About two weeks ago while we are the hospital, one of our doctor friends, a gynaecologist, told us that he was performing a c/s. We read up on the indications and found out this 22-week pregnant woman was eclamptic. I don’t know how many of us are familiar with this term, so let’s have a brief tutorial. Pre-eclampsia is a conditon that pertains only to pregnancy. The symptoms are high blood pressure, protein in the urine, swelling-especially pertaining to the feet/face/abdomen. This is why it is essential for women to receive regular antenatal care, so things like eclampsia can be recognized. Pre-eclampsia transitions to eclampsia at the point where the blood pressure raises even higher, there is more protein in the urine and fitting occurs. By “fitting”, I mean “convulsions”. (I don’t know if we use “fitting” as a medical term in the US, the first time I heard it, I envisioned Claire throwing a tantrum on our hardwood floor.) The thing about eclampsia is, at this point, you can’t just take medicine for it to go away, you can only recognize it and then treat it. The only way to treat it is for the baby to be delivered. So, now that we are all on the same page…

We prepped for theatre and entered to see Constance ready for her c/s. Once the baby was extracted, the staff were shocked that baby was alive. They had not been able to find a fetal heart and therefore assumed the baby was dead. We quickly rushed to the nursery and resuscitated the baby for an hour. Eventually, the baby was breathing normally and her heart was beating regularly. She was only 22-25 weeks old though, and the odds were against her. We pra*yed for a miracle and returned the next day to find that she had died a couple hours after we had left. I met Constance for the first time that day but with sky-high blood pressure and a recent operation, she wasn’t so responsive. These past couple weeks I have been able to hear her story.

Constance is a soldier. She has two jewels glued to her teeth, I don’t know what for, but she makes them look nice. She smiles as bright as the sun and loves to talk about her country and ask you questions about yours. She has one daughter named Roseline and wants so badly to have a sibling for her. Her second pregnancy was an ectopic pregnancy (to avoid another tutorial, maybe you can google that one) and this was the third pregnancy. She had never been to antenatal care and did not understand why she needed to. Her blood pressure slowly has been going down these past couple weeks since the delivery, but since then, we have been able to share with her about our lives. No one told her about her baby, so we got to tell her how much she weighed, that is was a girl and when she died. We were able to share that she is no longer suffering and that we believe she will get to meet her one day. Constance could answer any question you have about Je*sus dying for her, but I don’t know if she knows him yet. I feel blessed to know this woman of great strength and burdened for her to know the living and breathing, ever-present G*od. She shares that her heart is hurting but she knows that she must get over it. In the places where culture interferes, it can sometimes be difficult to explain and even relate how G*od wants to heal these hurting places, and that grieving is so much a part of it. It just isn’t culturally acceptable to speak of your feelings and cry.

Constance will be discharged on Monday and we are hoping to visit her village next week. Even in these times of pain, in times when the outcome isn’t the will of G*od, he can bring redemption, bring healing. This is my cry for her. I guess I am just learning how strong these woman are, when they lose a child, they are sad, but they shout for joy…even when I fully believe there is a place for grieving, they know joy and no one can deny it. I can’t ever deny that G*od will teach us through other people and their trials, when we allow our judgements or our “group” we are missing whole groups of people, we miss these small opportunities that turn into great lessons. I cannot deny that G*od is ever present in each of our lives. Oh how much I have to learn.