"Quick! Get the nitro!" Maman, our inpatient grimaced in pain as he clenched his chest. He came to us a week earlier with a complicated case of Typhoid with Malaria. He was old and very thin having already been sick for a week before coming to the clinic. We began treatment right away, but he didn't respond how we'd hoped. He began showing signs of congested heart failure, and now here he was having a heart attack.
We quickly took a set of vitals on him and they didn't look good. He took the nitro which helped, but he was still having chest pain. We began taking vitals every five minutes and each time his blood pressure dropped just a little more and his oxygen saturation would not come up. I began to get worried. "Is he going to pull through this?" I thought to myself. We continued to assess and do all we could to help him but to no avail. Eventually Mrs. George said we should get the family. Those words sunk into my chest like a lead into the ocean bringing with it further confirmation of a reality I didn't want to face.
Three of Mamam's children were over at the school just across the creek from the clinic, so it didn't take long for them to come over. As I saw them appear one by one into the clearing I braced myself for their emotions. I had only been in Kementiyan two weeks, but these three were already special to me. Jikina I had met down on the farm in the lowlands. A young girl of maybe nine years, yet a surprisingly skilled language teacher. She was always smiling and so accepting. Hilin, one of the high school students here was the first Palawano to befriend me. Since the very first day I met her she had reached out to me offering genuine friendship. And lastly there was Nuwi, one of the Palawano teachers in our elementary school. He was one of the ones who would help me tell stories in Palawan on Sabbath afternoons. Normally they are all smiling and joyous, but today their faces were somber. They quietly came and sat down near their father as other family and friends arrived filling up the whole front porch of the clinic.
It was hard on them not only to see their father in pain, but to some how find a way to say good-bye. Tears began to flow and it spread througout the whole group. Tears rolled down my own cheeks. I thought I was the only one, but as I looked at the other nurses I saw the same tears on their cheeks. Taking in the whole scene I tried my best to get some barrings on my emotions and prepare myself for what was coming. I had never seen anyone breath his last before... watch life disappear before my very eyes. I looked down at my watch. It was time to take vitals again. What would they show this time? The same... bouncing between bad and worse.
Pastor came and talked with Mamam. He was afraid to die. He had never accepted Christ as his Savior, but he said he wanted to. We prayed for him, and continued singing of our merciful Savior and his great love for us. One by one those close to him said good-bye. The five minuet mark came around again. His vitals were still the same. What was going to happen?
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