In Chad we have had to get used to an extra crunch at meal time because we occasionally get sand in our food. This afternoon I stood in the Operating Room and continually felt the crunch of sand in my mouth but I hadn't eaten a meal.
After administering a spinal anesthetic, I heard someone urgently shouting my name from Preop along with some rapidly spoken African French . I had to come quickly...My wife...Child...Emergency...Accident at school. I told the surgeon they could start without me and had a nurse watch the patient.
I sprinted out into the African heat of midday and through the front gate of the hospital. The school isn't more than 1/2 mile down the dirt road. I had no idea where exactly I was running and hoped it would be obvious.
I quickly found a crowd at the edge of the field by the school. Kim was there, hovering over a small child and she was grief stricken...the kid was motionless and wet.
I took a quick look and started CPR. This sweet 3yr old boy has fallen into a well. No one could tell me how long he was under. Chest compressions, mouth to mouth resuscitation, pulse checks again and again. Life support classes tell you what to do for pulseless & lifeless children but they don't describe what cold little lips feel like as you desperately try to breath life back into them. His pupils told the story. Fixed & dilated.
I pressed my ear against his wet shirt straining to hear anything. No pulses heard or felt. As I shook my head, the wailing escalated. I confirmed what the crowd already knew. I pulled a cloth over his body, scooped him into my arms and stood to carry him home. Some friends of the family accepted his lifeless body and took him home.
I stood silently for a few moments trying to make sense of what just occurred and then walked back to the hospital to rejoin the surgery already underway. My scrubs were drenched and stuck to my body-- partly due to running in the heat, the adrenaline from the emergency, and the baby boy's wet clothes pressed against my body as I carried him.
The surgery that I had to rejoin went well. Unfortunately I spent much of the time thinking about the sand crunching in my teeth.
I'm ok with a little sand in my teeth from poorly washed food. That's life in Chad. I'll never be ok with sand in my teeth after doing mouth to mouth on a drowned baby lying in a dusty field. But, that's life in Chad.
Matthew 11:28
Come to me, all who are weary and burdened.
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