Latest / The World Knowledge / When Persistence Pays Off

Transcript

When Persistence Pays Off · The World Knowledge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Well, good afternoon, listeners. Thank you for listening to Lament
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of Hope podcast. And I'm very grateful. This is going
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: to be a little unconventional, because if you're watching this,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: you're going to see it's just the logo for the podcast.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: But Dr. Katina and I really tried, and unfortunately, we
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: weren't able to do video, but that's okay.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: You know, in my position here, I'm often the one responsible,
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: because I'm the senior medical person. And if I don't
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: hear about it, if I get to that case late,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I'm the one responsible for that. If the care was
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: inadequate or whatever, I've got to follow up on that.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: So it's a huge burden. Whereas in the U.S., usually
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: the care is disseminated over many, many people. You've got
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: people in the wards. You've got people in the intensive
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: care unit. You've got many levels of care. You've got
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: many specialists involved. So it's not any one person who's like,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: He's the doctor that was, you know, in charge of
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: this kid when he died. You don't really have that.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Whereas here, it's not quite like that. It's like, yeah,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: I was kind of a guy that was supposed to
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: be the one to figure out what's wrong with this person.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: I couldn't do it. It's very, very humbling. And I
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: think in a way it puts things in perspective that,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: you know, we're just kind of scratching the surface as humans.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: We have no idea about anything. Um, we don't know
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: when life, we don't know much about life. We don't
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: know how the body works. There's less that we don't know.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I think in our, in our hubris, we think we
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: know everything. And that, you know, I follow the science
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: kind of guys think they know everything. We don't, we
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: don't know anything. And, uh, we're still quite far and
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: we're not God. We're not even close. Um, so I
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: think it's, it's humbling. Uh, yeah, but also in a
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: way for me, it's, it's in a sense, it's faith reaffirming.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: People say, why don't you get, How can you retain
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: your faith when there's so much tragedy all the time?
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I think that kind of reaffirms it.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: It shows me I'm not God.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: And it shows me, hey, there's got to be something
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: better than this, too. Because life is hard. It's hard work.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of suffering. Let's do what we can
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: to make it a bit better. But let's pray for
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: that day when we can do something. We can be
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: with God and kind of leave all this stuff behind.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Can I ask, what was, could you describe maybe what
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: was the first time you encountered a patient who died
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: that you cared for in Sudan?
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I hate to say it, but there are
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: so many. I've heard one case that stands out just
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: because it was out of a sense of despair, but
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: we had a measles epidemic here in 2014, 2015. So
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: cases because we had kids having vaccinated the war broke
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: out and for three years nobody was vaccinated um so
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: we made your measles epidemic and we had 30 kids
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: die and one morning it was a sunday morning and
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: i was going to the measles area was set up
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: we had to keep all those kids in isolation so
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: we put up seven tents behind the hospital the place
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: was full of kids with measles terribly sick vomiting diarrhea
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: fevers coughing You know, sticky, runny nose, just miserable. Anyway,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: it was Sunday morning. I tried to do a quick
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: round on Sunday morning so I could make it to
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: mass on time. I got to go around trying to
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: do a quick round Sunday morning. I just rest. I'm
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: just about to enter the tent. And I hear a
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: mother inside just wailing. I'm like, you know, I'm just
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: not I'm just not up for this right now.