books i've been reading....

Here are some books I've been reading over the last six months--or a few of the ones I would recommend out of what I've read. If you are looking for a light read, then avoid every book below.

"McCracken, calls her astonishingly candid memoir “the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending.” When she and her husband Edward were nearing the end of a 2006 writing sojourn in southern France, and she was in the ninth month of her pregnancy, her unborn baby boy died. Now teaching in upstate New York, and raising her second child, McCracken says she wasn’t ready for her first “to fade into history”—hence, this therapeutic memoir. In amazingly insightful chapters, she shares her acutely sensitive thoughts about how she and Edward dealt with their initial grief, how friends and family coped, where the couple placed their futile blame, if any, and the emotional strings attached to their decision to attempt a pregnancy so soon after this tragedy." -Deborah Donovan

"Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing just a pound at birth, at twenty-three weeks’ gestation. During the delivery she begged the doctors to "let her babies go" — she knew all too well that at twenty-three weeks they could very well die and, if they survived, they would face a high risk of permanent disabilities. However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter died just four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiply disabled: blind, nonverbal, and dependent on a feeding tube. This Lovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of the Forman family after the birth of the twins — the harrowing medical interventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity of life and death. In the end, the long delayed first steps of a five-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of a triumph narrative. Forman’s intelligent voice gives a sensitive, nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventual acceptance in this portrait of a mother’s fierce love for her children." -Amazon review

"Birth, like death, can be a messy affair. Though we all wish for beautful, healthy nine pound babies, we know that isn't always the case. Premature births pose all sorts of problems that present medical and moral dilemas for doctors, nurses, interns and parents, as well as for the little babies struggling to live, to fill their little lungs with life's breath or get their hearts pumping blood through their little bodies.Some of the babies whose stories are recounted in ALMOST HOME make it all the way home, others do not, but the stories collected here simply must be told. Some are unbelievably sad, and you will cry when you read them; others tell of babies who survived and did well against seemingly impossible odds; still others are embarrassing, as Dr. Gleason chronicles her tentative early years as a doctor-on-training. Taken together, however, the stories celebrate the miracles of modern medicine, mourn its failings, and marvel at the strength and resilience of the human body and spirit so evident in these little babies, their families, and the dedicated people who staff the intensive care units. ALMOST HOME is a remarkable debut book, the power of which lies in its abiding humanity and its intensely personal portrayal of the often fragile beginnings of a human life."-Amazon review

"If you have lost someone you love then this book can really help you understand and put your loss in perspective. The author lost three generations of his own family in one auto accident, his mother, wife and daughter. His Biblical wisdom and thoughtfulness has me going back to read and re-read often. One quote, in particular, I keep going back to and back to is, "I did not get over the loss of my loved ones: rather I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became a part of who I am." This book has helped me immensely in dealing with the lose of my husband. I have also shared the book with many others. Right now I am reading it with friend who lost both a newborn child and her mother both within a year. I truly think this book has helped to give me a peace about the loss of my loved one that I could not have had without this author's uncanny understanding and willingness to share his thoughts."-Donna Williams

"Pete Greig, has written his most intensely personal and honest account yet in God on Mute, a book born out of his wife Samie' s fight for her life and diagnosis of a debilitating brain tumor. Greig asks the timeless questions of what it means to suffer and to pray and to suffer through the silence because your prayers seem unanswered. This silence, Greig relates, is the hardest thing. The world collapses. Then all goes quiet. Words can't explain, don't fit, won't work. People avoid you and don't know what to say. So you turn to Him and you pray. You need Him more than ever before. But somehow...even God Himself seems on mute. In this heart-searching, honest and deeply profound book, Pete Greig looks at the hard side of prayer, how to respond when there seem to be no answers and how to cope with those who seek to interpret our experience for us. Here is a story of faith, hope and love beyond all understanding."-Amazon review

lately.

some of the aydc kids playing a game where you jump as high as you can...you have to touch your foot to the rubber-band rope (far above their heads) to stay in the game.

Anyone who knows Luka,(the director of the Akha Youth Development Center (where we live), knows his infectious laugh very well.

Joe (Ae's husband) throwing fertilizer on the field.

This week all of the AYDC staff put fertilizer on the rice fields. Ae has her super protectant sun gear on. She kept laughing at what a touristy foreigner i look like in Libby's hat that she left behind.

Joe and Vittaya.

Wipada

photos from the clinic...

Nong Burt, P Boo, and P Rung at the clinic. I have already been learning so much from each of them.

We had a friend visit the other week who is a nursing student in Seattle. This rhinoceros beetle was a treat for her too. This man held it in his hand during his check-up like it was nothing. During rainy season you can even purchase these creatures beside the road tied with strings to sticks. Kids will often fight them for fun.

Every day at the clinic we eat delicious Thai food together for lunch. I am often in the kitchen helping cook around lunch time so that I can learn how to make some of the dishes at home.

trauma.

If you aren't interested in reading a short novel, or have a weak stomach than read no further.

It happened two weeks ago, walking back to the truck after church in Huisan Akha Village. I was walking with my friends Gee, Blah, their kids, and another village mother and her two children. Just as I got off the phone with Rusty I heard a loud smacking sound and turned around to see the worst thing I have ever seen. The little girl, two years old had been hit by a motorbike driving too fast through the village. The bike literally ripped her face off. All the skin below both of her eyes and her entire nose ripped off her face and hanging above her mouth…I have never seen anything as gruesome and hope to never see anything like it again. Everyone looked to me, the nurse, with eyes of panic, but I’m certain my face mirrored theirs. I yelled to jump into the truck and within 10 seconds of the accident, we were flying down the mountain in the back of a pick-up truck to the Chiang Rai Government Hospital.

I sat next to the mother who was holding onto her little one in pure panic. We held the little girls hands down who kept trying to pull on her face, now bleeding all over her mother’s chest. I tried to stabilize the mother as we bumped over windy dirt roads, and she rocked her daughter, yelling in Akha and Lahu. The little girl was still crying, and breathing through her mouth, but we had no idea if she had any brain injuries from the blow. The little girl cried every once in a while, maintained consciousness and continued to breath the entire way to the hospital though through gurgling cries with the blood pouring down her throat.

The mother kept asking in Akha, “how will she eat tonight?” and “we don’t have citizenship, how will we pay for the hospital fees?” “I know that if she had a broken leg or broken arm the doctors could help, but with something like this? You think they can help?” Blah kept telling her, “don’t worry about the money…the doctors at this hospital are very good,” and every time Blah leaned forward to look at the little girl, her face lost all color. I thought maybe the little girl would die on the way and couldn’t imagine the feelings of a mother seeing your child in this kind of pain, and not being able to do anything. I had flashbacks of Olive dying in my arms, and how peaceful she was as she went…this however, was purely traumatic.

We drove through red lights, yelling at the top of our lungs we had an emergency and other kind drivers stopped traffic for us. To say it was dramatic is an understatement. When we arrived at the hospital, the mother handed me the little girl, and I ran inside the ER as fast as I could. As soon as the nurses saw her face they gasped and rushed her back into a private room to assess her. The doctors wrapped her face with sterile cloth and intubated her. X-rays and a CT scan followed revealing that her nose had been crushed, as well as her cheekbones. The results of the CT Scan came back, showing no damage to the brain, and we all breathed a giant sigh of relief. Surgery was scheduled for later in the evening around 5:30. The doctor said that if she had arrived 5 minutes later she might not of made it.

I walked to the nearest store to buy a new shirt for the mother since hers was now covered in blood. As I walked I felt like I was ready to pass out myself and started nervously shaking like you do when your blood sugar is low after a crazy adrenaline rush. The lady selling the shirts asked why I had blood on my shirt and I started telling her the story and the tears started welling up in my eyes. As soon as I was ready to pay, I realized I had no money on me and called Blah who came to pay for it.

The little girl stayed on the same floor of the hospital that Olive was on, so this of course brought back many memories, and we saw many of the staff that we were hoping to connect with again…nurses who cared for Olive and the cleaning ladies who we ate with every day. She couldn’t go into the ICU until after surgery, so she was outside in an overcrowded room full of patients and their families.

The drama continued in the afternoon as we waited for surgery. The little girl continued to bleed from her gaping wound, all the while gasping for breath between all the blood dripping down her throat. Her head was completely wrapped in sterile gauze, and blood was soaking through and dripping down onto her pillow. Her blood pressure was also low, which was concerning me. Meanwhile, the nurses sat comfortably at the nursing station talking and laughing in casual conversation. I asked about three times for them to come and suction her, and three times they asked me to wait. After the third time of asking I had a small explosion and said in Thai, “I can’t wait any longer. We’ve been waiting for about five minutes now and no one has been willing to help!” She finally came and suctioned the little girl removing lots of fluid, then turned to me and said, “See, there is nothing to worry about, it was dry…nothing to even suction.” I then informed her that I too was a nurse, hoping she would stop treating me like I knew nothing, and she seemed embarrassed to know this. I told her that I know the nurses here at the government hospital are very smart and good at what they do, but for some reason today it felt like nobody cared about this little girl or was doing their job.

If this little girl was Thai (and not hill tribe), and her parents had some money, I guarantee you she would have been given better treatment. 

Numerous times that day I asked my Akha friend Blah to ask the nurses different questions, and she said, “Better if you ask…they will listen to you because you are a foreigner more than they will listen to me if they know I am Akha.”

In the evening, after the four hour-long surgery, the little girl went to stay in the ICU.

After staying in the hospital for one week she was discharged home...much faster than anyone felt comfortable with. She came daily to the clinic I am volunteering at to get her suture wound cleaned an assessed. Since then her stitches have been removed, though doctors are recommending continued plastic surgery--which the parents don't think will be necessary.

Thankfully the motorbike insurance came through and covered her entire hospital bill of 50,000 baht ($1,666 US dollars) which sounds affordable to an American until you understand that an average days wage for an Akha farmer is 90-120 baht ($3-4).