Two stories

God moves so much in the everyday. Glimpses and gleams. Yesterday, we had the regular weekly outreach leprosy at Patan hospital in Kathmandu. Because we are recruiting for a very big study, the research group has been working in a special separate room from the other hospital staff. During the morning, we were very busy – every station had patients and staff working on different bits of the study. I remembered that Dr. Indra, our senior surgeon who does not come for satellite clinic every week, had not yet seen us in action yet for this particular project’s recruitment. So, I went and told him to maybe come and see when possible. He was busy and said he could maybe get time in the afternoon to come see. We continued to work right through lunch. We were expecting 22 people to come for follow-up that day, and not everyone in the study is a leprosy patient. By the end of the morning, one of the lab staff counted the files and saw only 19 had come. So, the lab staff began making reminder phone calls. One was a young woman. Later in the afternoon, Dr. Indra walked in. I began touring him around the different stations set up for the study. The young woman walked in – at which point, one of the lab staff recognized her from the morning and began to apologize. We’d made a mistake! She had already come earlier that day, and so we did not need to see her again. She sat down at one of the desks with the staff to talk a bit. But Dr. Indra was standing nearby. The woman has a very badly disfigured right hand from a burn injury – no fingers and angled sharply to the side. She manages her scarf carefully to cover it some. Dr. Indra is an orthopedic surgeon; and because many leprosy patients require hand surgery, we do a lot of that Anandaban. Someone spoke to Dr. Indra. He turned to look at her hand. They set a date for her surgery this fall when a UK plastic surgeon and hand specialist will come to perform a week of hand surgeries. J So was it a mistake that one of the staff known for details, mistakenly recalled the young woman to come back? And that she happened to come in the room when an orthopedic surgeon experienced in hand surgery would stand only a few feet from her? J

This evening, we had fellowship at the hospital. Several patients came. There has been a sweet little (and I mean little, maybe 60-70lbs) old lady staying at the hospital for some weeks now. She barely comes to my shoulder. She is blind in one eye. She has no fingers and her feet are not so good either. But she hobbles about at her 80 years, gentle and uncomplaining. Tonight, when we asked for prayer requests, she told us that she is scheduled to be discharged tomorrow to go home. Home is in the Okhaldunga area– which by any standards is remote. There is a flight to that area maybe twice a week – but often cancelled due to low priority and weather. Once she gets there, she will have to walk two days into steep hills to get home. She had tears flowing. She spoke of known bear attacks in the jungle hill paths. Often here, younger men in families will carry the elderly or people can be hired to carry others in baskets on their backs. These hills are steep. I had a very hard time trying to catch if she has any family to meet her along the way, but it sounded like maybe not. No one is coming here to get her. Someone is meeting her in KTM tomorrow, but they aren’t flying with her. It’s highly unusual for a woman to travel alone. There are women in the hospital who can’t go home until someone comes – because they have never been outside their village much before, aren’t educated (most women can’t even sign their name) and do not know how to get home by themselves. So, for this 80 year old to be going by herself…maybe there is no family. Maybe there is no way to get word to them. Maybe because it is now rice planting season, no one can be spared to meet her. How would she get word back to us to tell us she got home safely? I do not know how she will walk two days on her disabled feet. And how without fingers can she manage money to safely pay for things along the way when she is by herself? There are so many stories like this. And it still hurts. Please pray for her. Maybe that someone will be there going to her village to travel alongside her and help her to get home. That there will be no bears and she will not be afraid. Two other elderly women patients walked beside her after the meeting to help her back to the female ward for the night. What to do? Do you know that according to national standards, she does not even qualify as disabled…because it was caused by leprosy.