Super Typhoon

The month of October has been tough weather-wise for the Philippines. This morning a super typhoon (similar to a catagory 5 hurricane) moved inland about 200 miles north of us on our island of Luzon. While we are fine and are just experiencing heavy rains and cool breezes, the northern part of the island is suffering the effects of another typhoon.

Nurses Training

One of the most common questions I get from other missionaries is "Are you a nurse?" My response is usually the same--only by my husband's training. I have gotten pretty proficient at taking vital signs and checking urine-analysis strips. Having not been a nurse in the US or had any formal training, I often have to see and deal with things that are new. I actually make a terrible nurse when I observe and help take care of wounds. I always cringe and hurt myself whenever I have to clean wounds. I have decided that I really don't like puss. Allan and Ling must understand this because I am not asked to do this often. I have gotten good at pricking fingers to check blood sugar and hematocrit. I used to be really timid and wince when ever I pricked someone. I learned this only makes things worse when you have to stick them again because you didn't get enough blood.

There is one thing I am not sure even training could have prepared me for--watching someone physically deteriorate. In May just before Scott left, one of our patients came to clinic. Allan and Scott were suspicious that he had cancer. After a few tests and a chest x-ray the docs were almost certain it was lung cancer. Most of our patients can't afford treatment for cancer and the patient and his family chose not to have a biopsy to confirm this diagnosis. As I took his vitals the next time he came in, I thought he looked strong and healthy. Surely he wasn't as sick as Allan thought. He continued to come to clinic every few weeks over the summer. Each time his weight dropping more and more. If you read one of our our recent newsletters, you will know that in the Filipino culture it is not appropriate to directly tell someone they are dying. So while his family knew that he likely had cancer, I am not really sure how much he knew or even how much the family understood or believed.

Towards the end of August, while I was weighing him, he was distressed at his drop in weight. This quote is from an email sent to Scott in August: "Since you left he has dropped 4 kilos-about 1k a month. He was most distressed at this today. His pulse has also risen from about 80-88 back in April and May to 115 the last 2 months. He also doesn't look very good and his voice is weak and raspy. I of course have no idea if these things mean anything to you, but I thought I would let you know that he is visibly deteriorating." It was at that time that the family also accepted the fact that their father was dying.

Yesterday, his son and son-in-laws carried him in for a check up. I have never watched anyone visibly decline before my eyes over such a short period of time (5 months). He cannot stand without assistance. His breathing has become increasingly labored and Allan says the mass in the chest is obviously pressing on both trachea and heart. He is also in more pain now than before. Allan thinks he will not see Christmas. He gave him some medicine to help with the pain. It was so heart wrenching to see him struggle to even breathe. He was our last patient of the day and instead of our daily devotions, Ling, Allan and I just spent time in prayer for him and his family. I am not sure I could have been prepared for this even with training and experience as Allan and Ling were just as touched and upset over the situation.

Today Allan and I went to visit him in his home. Allan wanted to see how he was feeling and bring him the wheelchair from the clinic so that his family can push him around the house or out into the sunshine. The medicine had helped him to feel a little better and I think the family was comforted by our visit, especially his wife. While it was by no means a happy or pleasant visit, it was good for Allan and I to make a "house call". I think we sometimes forget exactly how our patients live.

Typhoon, flooding and now....

Earthquakes! Last night Allan and I experienced another phenomenon of living in the Philippines. We had just gotten into bed and turned out the lights when the bed began to jiggle. We both had the same thought—“what is he (she) doing over there?” Allan though noticed the windows were also rattling. After our bed quit doing a jig, he asked me; “did you do that or was that an earthquake?” Once we established that both of us had been lying still, we concluded that it had been an earthquake. Our deduction was helped by the fact that this wasn’t the first one of the evening. Earlier, we had been at a concert and afterwards our friends asked us if we felt the quake. Crazy us, we thought it was just vibrations from the music. The Philippines is a part of the Pacific Ring of Fire; a place where volcanic and earthquake activity are great. The epicenter of these quakes (there have now been 5) is an island just south of here called Marinduque where the quakes have been registering just above 5 on the Richter scale. They have been felt at about intensity 4 in Manila. So far there has been no damage reported. I am not sure how many miles or kilometers it is from here to Marinduque, but you can see the island on the map below. We are close to the big star by Manila and the red arrow points to the small island just south of our big island of Luzon. There have been other quakes in our time here, but they have only happened at night and we slept through them.

More Typhoon Pictures

Here are a few more pictures from the Typhoon taken by our new neighbors:

Picture taken from the Nelsen's balcony during the storm

Trees and Bamboo blowing during the wind

A billboard fallen on a building

Signs and trees on the road to school

How sweet it is

Ahh, we have water. Well we have had water since Tuesday actually, but we now have full water pressure. Yesterday, I had a warm shower for the first time in over 2 weeks. Since we had been off swimming with the kids and it was overcast and cool, I was a little cold...well ok so cold isn't really the right word, but it's all relative. I was cooler than normal I guess. It was so refreshing! In hot season there were times I never even turned the hot water on in the shower, but usually I like to at least start with a little warmth. When it is completely cold, it is a shock to my system. Allan had actually gotten a hot shower earlier in the week, but everytime I headed off to the shower the water pressure was not enough to get the water hot. We have a different hot water system than we were familiar with. Our water heater is gas, but instead of having a big tank filled with water and kept hot, our heater passes the water through coils and heats it as it's used, similar to a radiator. While the down side is that you have to have enough water pressure to trigger the heater and keep it heating, the good news is that as long as we have propane in our tank, no one can use all the hot water! This is important since Emily really enjoys nice long showers and baths. You will have to forgive the fact that I don't have a picture of my shower to go along with this blog. Since I love to attach pictures, here's two of Emily taken by some friends recently at lunch after church.

Just a couple pictures:

Here are a couple pictures we took yesterday while out driving. I still hope to get the ones our neighbor took during the typhoon and just after. The clinic now has power, but we are still without water. Hopefully it will be restored by tomorrow.

So many houses have had roofs blown off.

Manila loves huge steel Billboards. Unfortunately, these caused tremendous damage. The winds toppled them onto houses, cars and people. It was particularly damaging to the many Squatter areas the are built beneath them. Fortunately this one fell into an empty field. So much devastation was caused by these, that the President is calling for a limiting or ban of these type of billboards.

Pray for our city

Please continue to pray for our area. Just days after a category 4 Typhoon caused significant damage around our island, torrential rains from another tropical depression have produced severe flooding. This past Monday, strong rains produced rapid and deadly flooding around Antipolo (the city where our clinic and houses are located). Six people drowned in these floods and the already damaged houses took another beating from the flood water. One of the national volunteers in our clinic had neck high flooding in her home. This dear friend is not a wealthy Filipino. Most families here live day to day and paycheck to paycheck, so there is not much money to replace the things that were lost.

After Monday night's heavy downpour and flooding, things look worse than they did over the weekend. Many trees, concrete power poles, signs, roofs, sheet metal, and other debris litter the roads and ground as well as thick layers of mud. Often the air is filled with smoke as people try to burn the leaves, sticks and debris swept from homes, yards, and roads. Many of our friends and fellow missionaries are still with out power, water, and phone. Some of them had their utilities restored, only to lose them again on Monday night.

Our family is doing well. We currently have power but no water service. The clinic remains without power or water. We continue to see patients but some services are limited without power. (Reading a x-ray by holding it up to the sun-lit window is not the ideal method taught to physicians). Many of our lab tests are also limited by lack of power.

Below are a few pictures we took on our street today. These pictures do not show too much destruction, but they give you an idea of what things look like here.

Mud and downed power lines in front of the clinic

Downed Cement power pole and trees

Xangsane

Well, we have survived our second typhoon. Last Thursday, the strongest typhoon in 11 years passed over us. It entered our island of Luzon as a catagory 4 typhoon. I am not sure what strength it was when it finally got to our location since we were out of communication by that time. It was actually a little surreal. After days of rain last week, we woke up Thursday morning to a cold breeze blowing through our windows and temps around 73. It was actually really nice. At 9 am the power was shut off as the rains began and by 10:30 we were in the midst of heavy rains and high winds. It's kind of funny that in the US we would have evacuated, but here, being an island, there is not really any place to evacuate. So we sat as a family on our screen porch and watched the weather rage. Since the storm was coming from the front of our house, we were safe sitting in the back. Thankfully the storm moved through quickly and after about 4 hours it was all over. Since we had no power or lines of communication, we kept thinking we must be in the eye, but by nightfall we realized things were over. We were without power and water from Thursday until Saturday, but if you read our blog this summer, you will remember that we have dealt with this before. Allan did manage to get our generator running for a few hours and that held the stuff in the refridgerator. As for personal damage, we had some minor flooding in our kitchen. With the gusting winds, all the seals around our kitchen windows and doors leaked, but since we have marble floors and cement walls there was no damage inside. The trees in the yard and across the ravine are somewhat stripped, but no real damage to the 2 houses or the clinic. Unfortunately, this was not the case in other places. Over 100 people are currently reported as having died, most from flooding and landslides. This number will probably continue to rise in coming days. Also many areas are still with out power or water. Our neighbor has taken some pictures of the damage around our area and I hope to post them here in the next few days.
The kids have enjoyed their time off from school. They had just gone to bed Wednesday night when we got the word that school was canceled for Thursday. I guess it was kind of like having a snow day. They asked if they could please get up and stay up late. Emily had wanted to stay up and watch her first Nascar race. She has been interested in racing since watching "Herbie, Fully Loaded" and "Cars". She stayed up until 11 watching a replay of the race in Delaware, cheering on the Nelsen's cousin who is a Nascar driver. It was very exciting as he was in the lead most of the race, but lost in the last lap when he ran out of gas. The rest of their 4 day holiday was spent playing board games and outside games like Capture the Flag with the 3 kids next door. When power was finally restored, I had to do a couple loads of wet, stinky, muddy clothes from all their days of hard play. They headed off to school this morning. Power had yet to be restored, but the school has generators to provide a limited amount of lights for the day. I am not sure the kids were ready to return to school this morning. I think they would have liked a few more days to goof off. They will get them though beginning Thursday when they start October break. School closes down in Oct. and April for a week and a half to allow boarders to return home and visit their families.