Senesim Skin

I’ve been told by several Papua New Guinea nationals that when a new family moves here, they need to “senisim skin” or “exchange skin.” The first step, Emil, my co-worker from the hangar, told me, is that our white skin becomes darker so we don’t get burned from the sun. The next step is to be sick for a month or two. After that, we’ll have PNG skin and we won’t get sick any more. I’ve found that timeline is holding true. Everyone has been taking turns hacking, snotting, coughing, fevering, and complaining. Which led me to muse a little about suffering. Originally my muse was more of a sermon, according to my proofreader, Janice. So I shortened it. You can thank her.

Suffering

The only thing certain in life is death and taxes. In other words, suffering is unavoidable. But that’s not all bad news because It seems to me that the most impactful people are just normal people who have suffered well.

Of course even as I write that, I’m hoping that suffering doesn’t come knocking on my door, so yes, I’m a little hypocritical.

It seems to me that people who suffer have two outcomes: Either they become better or they become bitter. That does sound like a cliche, and it’s entirely possible I’ve plagiarized that term. But let’s forget about my lazy writing and focus on what I’m trying to say: Becoming bitter or better depends on whether you suffer well or badly.

Suffering Well vs. Suffering Badly

It seems people who suffer badly do so because they believe they deserve good things and so if Providence removes those things, it’s theft and they have a right to be angry. This pride leads to bitterness.

It seems people who suffer well do so because they realize that they don’t deserve the good things they are blessed with. As Job said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” Job was able to suffer well because he didn’t think God owed him anything. This humility leads to ‘betterness,’ which is a word I made up.

Often we don’t really know how we’ll react to suffering until it lands on our lap like a huge spider dropping from the ceiling. All our self righteous chest pounding quickly stops as we scramble over light fixtures. But I think the best preventative to bitterness during suffering is gratefulness for what you have while you have it, before you lose it. It’s a head start to suffering well because you’re already giving credit to someone else for giving it to you. It doesn’t always stop you from being upset about it, though, when it gets taken away. Still, it’s a head start.

Of course, sometimes we need to have something taken away before we realize we’re even grateful for it – like our health, for example.

Janice Gets Sick

The whole family has been going through colds like cheap toilet paper, but Janice was, by far, the sickest.

It started off as kind of a cold and we didn’t think much of it because everyone on the base was taking their turns getting sick. I was sick for about four or five days and then a week later repeated the same sickness for good measure. But Janice seemed to slowly sink deeper and deeper. Fever, aches, pains, chills, cough, loss of appetite. After a week of worsening symptoms, we thought we were seeing a repeat of Covid. Janice had Covid when she was 35 weeks pregnant with Oliver and it made her cough so bad she went into labor. She also got a Hiatal hernia, a souvenir that still causes problems to this day. What was the cure for Covid? Wait and see if you die. Vitamin C and Zinc can’t hurt. So that was my plan this time around.

After two weeks, Janice had lost about fifteen pounds and wasn’t in great spirits. Who could blame her? Several times I thought Janice was getting better but in retrospect it was probably just wishful thinking. I was hoping she would get better for several reasons. One, I like her very much and was concerned for her, obviously. Two, I was ready to strap the children to the wall with duck tape and give them a four hour lecture on the cost of food, the extent of their blessings, and the benefits of being thankful about it, among other topics. Third, I was planning on flying into a bush village with two other guys from Samaritan Aviation and stay there for several days. I didn’t want to miss it, especially because my children, whom I love very much, weren’t coming along. Still, it could be worse. I could be the one who was sick.

Many prayers were made for healing, yet Janice’s condition worsened, leaving me a bit bitter about the whole situation. Janice didn’t deserve this! She looked like death warmed over, which is better than ice cold death, but still involves death, so I was worried about it.

Now during this time our haus meri, Agatha, noticed Janice’s condition and was concerned. It didn’t take a medical degree to see that Janice was sick. A haus meri (literally translated: house woman) is like a housekeeper. Now this leads me to a short little bunny trail but you may be thinking, why would a missionary need a housekeeper? Are they too lazy to clean their own house?

These are the thoughts I had when I was told we should hire a haus meri. As it turns out, there’s several reasons to hire one. The first is that generally missionary wives don’t leave the compound as often their husbands so they don’t get as much language exposure. Having a haus meri in your home is one great way to get language and culture exposure. Also, it’s great for community relations. And it helps remove some items off of Janice’s to-do list so she has more space to study language or homeschool.

So back to the story. Our haus meri, asked to pray over Janice. Of course Janice agreed, and as Agatha prayed for Janice, the relationship between them changed from being just business partners to also being friends. After this we noticed she began going above and beyond what we expected to do.

A veteran missionary explained to us that, we as missionaries, even if we’re poor by western standards, are wealthy when compared to the average person in Papua New Guinea. We come here and try to help people and fix problems because that’s what our job description is. But the locals can find it difficult to contribute to the relationship because they feel like there’s not much they can give us. But because Janice got sick, Agatha had an opportunity to contribute to the relationship in a meaningful way and now the relationship is stronger because of it. Suffering has its perks, I guess.

The day before I was tentatively scheduled to fly out on the floatplane to the bush, Chris, who is a nurse and the Medical-And-Everything-Else Director here at Samaritan Aviation, came to our house to check up on Janice and take a set of vitals. Chris was consulting with Dr. Kevin about Janice’s case. Dr. Kevin is a doctor with New Tribes and lives in Goroka at one of NTM’s large bases up in the highlands. He’s worked in Papua New Guinea for thirty years and so he’s seen a lot of tropical diseases.

The vitals indicated that Janice was severely dehydrated so that afternoon Chris administered three bags of IV fluid and instructed Janice to keep drinking plenty of fluids. He would take another set of vitals the next day. If there wasn’t much improvement, we’d have to go see Dr. Kevin in person.

Adi Gets Stitches

That evening we were having a birthday party. Janice was sick so in theory I was on duty watching the kids. One of the kids came in and mentioned that Adi was bleeding. I nodded and took a sip of coffee. Bleeding is an excuse often used to acquire Band-Aids and nothing more. 

“She’s kind of bleeding a lot,” the child clarified. 

I followed the concerned child down to sidewalk underneath the house and found Adi standing in a large pool of dark red blood. There were smaller puddles scattered around with little trails between them. She had stepped on an old cat food tin and gashed her foot open. My brain began shorting out. What do I do? What do I do? Wait a minute, there’s a nurse upstairs. I don’t have to know what to do, I just gotta get her upstairs! So I swept Adi off her feet and carried her into the house, leaving a blood trail up the steps and into the house. Chris calmly accessed the situation and, after a brief examination, decided Adi needed stitches. So we held her down while Chris stitched her up. Two of the four numbing shots in the medicine cabinet were outdated and didn’t work so there was a lot of screaming. Thankfully she only needed three stitches. What drama!

Janice Gets Sicker

That night Janice woke up and began shaking like crazy, something I learned later was a phenomenon called “rigors.” This hadn’t happened last time Janice had Covid and it scared me. Right then and there I decided to skip the village trip and stay home with Janice. Afterwards I found out that many of the fellow missionary wives were appalled I was even considering leaving Janice in her condition. In my defense, Janice kept telling me I should go and she’ll be fine although I still felt bad when I found out how sick Janice was.

The next morning Chris came and took another set of vitals. Janice was still dehydrated. She would have to go to Goroka.

This raised the question, how do we get there? You can’t just drive to Goroka. Lucky for us, we had a floatplane and in a twist of fate, we experienced the ministry of Samaritan Aviation firsthand as Janice was medivacced to Goroka. We didn’t pay a cent and we flew out the same day, which was a huge blessing for us, both financially, logistically, and medically, as we’d come to find out. I can’t image how much of a blessing it is for people who make pennies a day and have even more urgent, life threatening conditions.

Unfortunately I couldn’t go along because I pushed the plane past it’s maximum allowable weight. Goroka is a pretty far haul for our little Cessna 206 so it takes more fuel to get there, which reduces the amount of weight available to haul cargo or people. Not only that, but the increase in elevation reduces the useful load as well. So I stayed at home with the kids while Janeen, the wife of one our pilots, went along to keep Janice company.

A report soon came back. Janice had received two more bags of IV fluid and been administered a blood test, a kidney function test, a Covid test, a malaria test, a dengue test, a typhoid test, and an erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR or sed rate) test, and probably other tests I’ve forgotten about. All those tests came back fine, with the notable exception of the sed rate test. The sed rate test measures inflation in the body. A normal person scores around 20. A very sick person hits at about 60. Janice’s number came in at 100. 

“Don’t worry,” Dr. Kevin said, “This is proof you’re not faking it.” 

Dr. Kevin’s diagnostic opinion is that Janice had a case of Zika or Chikungunya, neither of which he had a test for, and both of which are mosquito transmitted viruses with symptoms very similar to what Janice had. But the major crisis that was developing without us realizing it was that the severe dehydration coupled with a sinus infection had led to a bacterial infection. This led to the beginnings of sepsis, an infection in the blood. As a missionary in Papua New Guinea there’s a health crisis, which is bad, and then there’s a “Go to Australia” health crisis, which is far worse. Janice was on the verge of a pretty major “Go to Australia” health crisis. In retrospect, God may not have miraculously healed my wife, but such was the series of events that we were saved from a much bigger health crisis. I’m grateful for that.

After a heavy course of antibiotics and plenty of fluids, Janice is on the mend. She’s feeling much better. Thank you to all who prayed for her. It’s really something to have so many people on “speed dial” to pray for our family. Thank you!