As I write this note my little girl Joy is sound asleep here next to me. This is a big change from her tear filled eyes prior to drifting off to sleep. I can only imagine how it must be for her as four year old to be in an unfamiliar setting even if she does know me from the past year of phone calls and pictures. She is away from the home she knows and I suspect I haven't heard the last of the pleas to return there soon (she's scheduled to go back mid-day Sunday).
I'll admit, I was hoping/praying that she'd be overjoyed to see me and we'd have several days of fun and bonding together before I head home. Reality quickly trumped that type of wishful thinking but it is still a blessing to be able to have this time with her (even if it may be difficult) because she's to be our child for the rest of our lives and there are greater transitions ahead for everyone involved.
I'll admit that not having my wife Becky with me here (she was a wonderful comforter for Joy last year when we had her with us for a week) makes this a bigger challenge but heck, I'm a pediatrician so I shouldn't be intimidated by this beautiful, skinny, determined four year old who is already missing a few teeth in the front of her face -- should I?? We were able to have a short FaceTime session, when I could locate a strong enough signal down a hallway, with the crew back home and Joy clearly wanted Becky to either be here or for us to go to her (she was even stroking Becky's hair on the iPad screen).
The wifi connection in my room is strong enough for basic e-mail but too weak to send decent photos so I'm going to move rooms tomorrow to try and get more consistent service (we're currently at the end of a long hallway and must be a ways from the routers) so I hope to send some pictures in the near future.
The last two days of training sessions went well. We had a power outage yesterday afternoon but it worked out okay because I was teaching Helping Babies Breathe and that can be done with a flip chart and non-technology dependent equipment (as it's geared for teaching in resource limited locations). Today went off without a hitch.
Four of the eight potential new trainers emerged to be well suited and today they were a great asset in teaching and testing basic life support. Friday they'll have an even greater role and I think they will do well.
One of the neat aspects of this training trip was that there were several individuals who I'd consider non-health care workers in the traditional sense who came to the training and did quite well. There is a local dental office that decided to send several of their staff, including their accounts manager, handyman, and front desk person to learn basic life support and I was very pleased with the energy, enthusiasm, and ability to demonstrate proficiency with the core skills. We even had the 17 year old son of the clinic office manager come to training and he also did great. I have pictures of me handing him his certificate of completion and we both have big grins on or faces. Joy and I are going to visit their clinic tomorrow so hopefully that will be a nice outing for us.
I will be looking for other ways to fill our time together and suspect that further updates will only come after she's asleep at night. Thankfully she's pretty early to bed and hopefully will sleep well through the night.
I suppose I'll wrap up this stream of consciousness update.
You are all missed and I look forward to returning home soon. Thanks for the nice notes I've received as well as for the thoughts and prayers -- they are all greatly needed and appreciated.
Will "talk" again soon.
Jay
PS (from Becky)- Jay asked me to attach this song from Chris Tomlin- "Sovereign" - the words really speak to where we are right now. The Lord is Sovereign- and for that we are so thankful! His love truly is never failing!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment