Friday night

I've just said goodbye to our three family practice residents who have been working in Kijabe for a month. Alyson has been doing obstetrics with us - truly a joy to work with and a real help, especially in the maternal-child health clinic. I had them over for mung bean curry and a weird take on bread pudding (I used banana bread and threw chocolate and bananas into the custard - not too bad surprisingly). Luthien showed off abominably, and is more convinced than ever that she is in fact the centre of the world.

There have been several tough situations this week - two women on our theatre list who turned out to have unresectable cancers, comforting a woman facing her fourth consecutive miscarriage, and another whose baby turned blue several hours after delivery and and was diagnosed with severe heart problems (almost certain to be fatal).

But there have been many moments of pure joy. One 16 year old girl with a very rare cancer who tried to bleed to death on Saturday night. I managed to stop the bleeding with a hysterectomy and then telephoned everyone on the hospital blood donation list until we had enough donors. After 8 units of blood she had a haemaglobin of 7 - and now whenever I see her giggle with a patient in the next bed or smile to greet me I am tempted to break out into songs of praise to our great God who has saved her.

And one night when I was just 'passing through' the ward to collect something I was somewhat irritated that a patient noticed me and called me to see her. But there was no complaint, she thought I would want to know that the woman in the next bed had delivered, 'since you prayed for her child this morning I thought you would want to give thanks to God.' She then proceded to update me on the entire bay - clearly she had listened to my prayers with each patient in the morning and wanted me to know 'those two delivered safely, that one had her baby come back from nursery, the one next to me had no further bleeding, and my blood pressure is much improved.' She then instructed me to pray again with each patient that God would keep and preserve them through the night - and after our time of prayer I walked home in the starlight, humbled, knowing that I had been standing on holy ground.