A picture is worth a thousand words

This big seller in Taiwan has come to the Philippines. Most of the "tray cover" is written in English, however, note down in the left bottom corner is the Taglish (Tagolog + English) version of McDonald's slogan "I'm loving it"

Do I have 2 heads?

When I look in the mirror, I don't see a particularly odd looking person looking back at me. I consider myself about as average as average gets. However, to Filipino children who are being seen at our clinic, I must appear equivalent to someone with 2 heads. While all gawk at me, I've found they do so in very different ways.

The highly timid and shy ones will just grab onto their parent and stare with wide-eyes locked onto my every move ( I pray for them: that their eyes won't actually pop out of their heads as they appear to be on the verge of doing). The braver sort will venture a touch of the strange being in front of them. The most common touch is to sneak a hand down to my leg (usually as I am examining their other family members) and graze the hairs on my leg. I guess they think that I can't feel that. I can understand the fascination here. Filipinos don't have alot of body hair and certainly not blonde hair so sneaking a feel of this strange stuff is completely understandable. The most aggressive ones have developed a new tactic - to poke at me as if taunting a wild animal pinned in a cage. I had to draw the line at this one because I found it disrepectful (although I must admit that this interpretation is highly influenced by my "American-ness").

So when you visit the clinic (and you are welcome anytime) be prepared for some inquisitive probes, rubs, and maybe even a poke.

Ginger said that I had to clearly state that it was me who wrote this so everyone would not think she is the one with the hairy legs --because she shaves her legs (most of the time).

"It's the Holiday Season..."

Do you ever notice that a lot of my blog titles and blogs have parts of songs in them? I always seem to have some song running through my head and often these are triggered by events around me. My best friend, Amy, doesn't realize that when she has called or we talk about her, either Allan or myself break into the song..."Amy, what you wanna do?..." by Pure Prairie League(now there's a blast from the 70's). Well this weekend there are other songs running around in my brain and I wish they would get out. In case you aren't aware, it's a -ber month. No, that doesn't mean things are turning colder here in the Philippines. It means that the months ending in -ber are official Christmas months. So September is the kick off to Christmas. Friday afternoon after picking the kids up from school, we ran by the grocery store to get 2 things. We walked in the store to the sounds of "The most wonderful time of the year" followed by "Feliz Navidad". Emily groaned and asked, "Already?" Our tv stations are playing the annual Christmas movies. At the Antipolo, Civic Center the Christmas Carnival has begun setting up. The malls have begun decorating and by October everything will be in full swing. I guess it's fitting then that I did some of my Christmas shopping online this week. It's not that I am already in the Christmas frame of mind, but my parents are coming at the beginning of November and the kids want a few things that are either only found in the US or much cheaper there. So let me be the first to greet you with a "Merry Christmas!"

Clinic Tour; part 2

This is a continuation of a blog from a couple of weeks ago that is taking you on a tour of our clinic. In the first part I showed the waiting room and the first stop along the way to seeing the doctor--the nurses station, where we take vital signs. After one of our staff takes your vital signs, (hopefully if you are ever a patient, school will be out and you will be taken care of by the great nursing team of Ginger and Emily) our patients return to the waiting room and wait for the doctor. In our clinic we don't stand on ceremony so most often the dr. calls his own patient. It is then that our patients go to the exam room. It is in the other half of the room where we take vital signs and consists of a 10 foot long table and a lot of chairs.

Seeing the doctor

Dr. Allan explains how to take the medicine

Getting a second opinion

Stats

For the past year, Ginger and I have been trying to write about our everyday experiences in missionary service (OK, I admit it, Ginger does most of the writing but those who know us well already predicted that would be the case). Writing these takes a good bit of time and effort so when we first started I decided to put a site meter on our website that would keep certain statistics on who visits. Would you have guessed a former electrical engineer would be interested in the statistics?

After 1 year, here are some of our stats from the blog (not including Philippine Mission website):

1514 total visits to our blog
57 visitors this past week
8 visitors per day average
2 minutes 25 seconds average time each visitor spends on site
1.5 page views per visitor
2350 total page views
Not surprisingly, most visitors are from the U.S.

Here are the stats from the Philippine Mission website:
1856 Total page views
Other than the main index page, most people visited our photos with 190 views of "Family Fun" and 109 views of "New Tribes"

We appreciate those who take enough interest in our lives and our ministry to read our stories. Thanks so much for your encouragement to us that these numbers represent.

---> Add on: Thinking of numbers, reminded me that:
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
Funny, huh? (or maybe, not)

Jomar

I received an email this weekend that asked if we were without phones once again. I realize my blogging and emailing has been sparse recently, but it is not due to phone or power related issues. I have been in charge of a bazaar at the kids' school and it has taken up a lot of my computer time in recent weeks contacting vendors and making preparations. The bazaar- called "Shoppers' Day" is a bi-annual event for the missionary community. All the soccer teams play a game against our biggest rival- the International School of Manila. Outside, there is food and fun put on by the Student Council, similar to a school carnival. In the gym is the bazaar with 70-80 vendors coming to sell Filipino Handicrafts(this is the part I was responsible for). It is a big event and a great time of fellowship for the missionary community. Since the event was this past Saturday, things are returning to normal for me this morning.

I also returned to the clinic this morning for the first time in many weeks. We have had two 4th year nursing students here from the States and so I was replaced in my job at the clinic by them. This left me free to take care of Shoppers' Day, but it was great to be back working with Allan and Ling and seeing patients. We saw lots of kids this morning and they are always my favorites. There was one 3 or 4 year old boy who came with his baby sister. He really wanted to be the patient though. He wanted me to check all of his vital signs and everytime I went out to the waiting room to call a patient he said "Hey, ako, ako", which means me, me. He also kept wanting to pat me on the back. He was so cute and had a great big smile, but as you can see, when I tried to take his picture he refused to smile. (pardon the blurriness, but I was having camera problems this morning)

As cute as that little boy is, he isn't the one that stole my heart this morning though. Jomar is a 9 year old boy who began coming to the clinic in July for epilepsy. I could tell when he climbed on the scale this morning that something wasn't right with his mannerisms and his eyes. As I took his vital signs, I began to wonder if he was mentally retarded. Some of the things he did reminded me so much of my cousin Jenny who is MR. He seemed a little shy at first, but he soon warmed up. When Allan shined the light into his eyes he got so tickled that he giggled through out the rest of the exam. As Allan went to fill his meds, Jomar and I began making goofy eyes at each other. After a few minutes, he began saying "Rain, Rain go away, sa (tagalog word) another day" in perfect English over and over. He was such a delight. What his dad then told Ling and I, broke my heart. Jomar had been perfectly normal until he was 7 years old. He was a bright boy and in school, but one day he hit his head and he has been having seizures ever since. His seizures became so frequent that his parents began schooling him at home. He is now very developmentally delayed. For the last 2 months, he has been on some medicine that was part of the donation from that US hospital that closed. His seizures have dropped from 1 or more a day to only 1 a week. I really wanted to take a good picture of him this morning, but my camera still wouldn't cooperate. He gave some great poses, but unfortunately they were blurry. So this is the best shot I have of him and his dad. We see so many single mother families here, that it is great to see a dad care so much for his son. Would you join us in praying for Jomar and his family? We only have about 7 weeks worth of seizure meds left for him and are hoping the med is available here for us to purchase more.


Allan's two cents: For the past few months the clinic has been well stocked with just about any medicine a primary care doctor could ask for. This abundance was due to the closure of a hospital in the U.S. and the medicines that were given from its stock. These are top-of-line type drugs that I was trained to use during residency in the States. It has been good to be able to provide some of the best medications (that I am familiar with) for certain problems. However, we are now starting to deplete some of the most heavily needed medications, such as those for chronic lung problems, which requires us to switch to second-line or even "distinctly alternative" choices. Please pray for us as I am learning and adapting to using medicines that may not even be available in the U.S.