There is something deeply poignant about taking a patient with a medical emergency to the hospital.
Firstly, there is the moment where they come into my awareness. Maybe it’s because a relative comes running to the Dispensary and asks me to come with them to their house, or maybe the patient makes their own way somehow to the Dispensary, not understanding how serious their condition is, or maybe it’s the phone call from Hamisi who guards the Dispensary at night, apologising many times as he hears my sleepy voice answer and then explaining that people need me urgently there.
Then there is the moment when something inside me goes “Oh $#*+!” and I know that there is danger, that here is a body approaching the edge of life. Will they tip over that edge before I can get them treatment and pull them back? Or is this the time their soul has chosen to move to higher planes? Will I be the shepherd on that journey?
Of course the memories of my sweetheart Özge in India come back to me. Not flooding my senses and incapacitating me so completely as they did some months ago, making me believe that no one ever comes back from that edge once they start moving towards it. That was a painful belief I had for a while. If someone falls and hits their head, they are going to die. No way round it. It was like my mind had made a rule out of Özge’s accident to compensate for the fact that I could do nothing about it, that she just slipped through my fingers. That’s just the way things are.
But now, once again, there is hope, and also strength to open a way back for them.
Then there is the long moment, which seems somehow outside of time, as the journey to the hospital or one of the private and better equipped clinics in Lamu town begins. I stay very close to the patient, watching their face, watching their breathing, their movements, as they slowly walk or others carry them towards a boat on the beach. It takes about 20 minutes to sail to Lamu town’s sea front from Shela. It took twice as long to drive Özge through the Indian morning traffic chaos to the neurosurgery clinic.
Once we are on the boat, I let my presence expand so that I am encompassing the whole vessel – with its captain, any family members, the patient and myself. There is almost a sense of peace as we become a unit moving forward in space and time – time that is the ultimate deciding factor. I don’t crowd the patient or fuss over them too much, but I try to give them some space to take in what is happening around them. I take their pulse often though, talk to them, and scan their face for signs of deterioration. Sometimes the thought comes to me: Is this another one who will slip away in my arms? Özge fell into the coma that she never woke from while her head was resting in my lap in the back of the taxi trying to force its way trough the wild waves of the Indian morning.
I didn’t think I could ever find it in me to transport a patient to hospital again after that. But somehow, here I am, sitting with them through the Kenyan waters, telling them what is happening, where we are going and that we are looking after them.
So far, they have all come back from the edge, after a journey in the blazing sun or in the starlit night through the seas. I know that will not always be the case though. That will be another moment I will deal with when it arrives. I hope for the strength to accept the things which I cannot change, even as I do my all down here at the Equator to give the villagers a chance.
Thank you once again for your donations on PayPal, which have already funded medicines that have saved a patient from a post-surgery infection, taken down the swelling in two of the football team’s legs and got two Aspivenin devices on the way here. The goal of buying a haematology analyser for the Dispensary is becoming more real thanks to incredibly generous donations from my Brennan Healing School colleagues. Deep gratitude to you ALL – I feel you’ve got my back, and that of this whole village, as we sail these choppy, adventurous seas!
