Death Warmed Over is Better Than Death Served Cold, But It's Still Worrisome

Senesim Skin

I’ve been told by several Papua New Guinea nationals that when a new family moves here, they need to “senisim skin” or “change skin.” The first step, Emil, my co-worker from the hangar, told me, is that our white skin becomes darker so we don’t get burned from the sun. The next step is to be sick for a month or two. After that, we’ll have PNG skin and we won’t get sick any more. I’ve found that timeline is holding true. Everyone has been taking turns hacking, snotting, coughing, fevering, and complaining. Which led me to muse a little about suffering. Originally my muse was more of a sermon, according to my proofreader, Janice. So I shortened it. You can thank her.

Suffering

The only thing certain in life is death and taxes. In other words, suffering is unavoidable. But that’s not all bad news because It seems to me that the most impactful people are just normal people who have suffered well.

Of course even as I write that, I’m hoping that suffering doesn’t come knocking on my door, so yes, I’m a little hypocritical.

It seems to me that people who suffer have two outcomes: Either they become better or they become bitter. That does sound like a cliche, and it’s entirely possible I’ve plagiarized that term. But let’s forget about my lazy writing and focus on what I’m trying to say: Becoming bitter or better depends on whether you suffer well or badly.

Suffering Well vs. Suffering Badly

It seems people who suffer badly do so because they believe they deserve good things and so if Providence removes those things, it’s theft and they have a right to be angry. This leads to bitterness.

It seems people who suffer well do so because they realize that they don’t deserve the good things they are blessed with. As Job said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” Job was able to suffer well because he didn’t think God owed him anything. This humility leads to ‘betterness,’ which is a word I made up.

Often we don’t really know how we’ll react to suffering until it lands on our lap like a huge spider dropping from the ceiling. All our self righteous chest pounding quickly stops as we scramble over light fixtures. But I think the best preventative to bitterness is gratefulness for what you have while you have it, before you lose it. It’s a head start to suffering well because you’re already giving credit to someone else for giving it to you. It doesn’t always stop you from being upset about it, though, when it gets taken away. Still, it’s a head start.

Of course, sometimes we need to have something taken away before we realize we’re even grateful for it - like our health, for example.

Janice Gets Sick

The whole family has been going through colds like cheap toilet paper, but Janice was, by far, the sickest.

It started off as kind of a cold and we didn’t think much of it because everyone on the base was taking their turns getting sick. I was sick for about four or five days and then a week later repeated the same sickness for good measure. But Janice seemed to slowly sink deeper and deeper. Fever, aches, pains, chills, cough, loss of appetite. After a week of worsening symptoms, we thought we were seeing a repeat of Covid. Janice had Covid when she was 35 weeks pregnant with Oliver and it made her cough so bad she went into labor. What was the cure for Covid? Wait and see if you die. Vitamin C and Zinc can’t hurt. So that was my plan this time around.

After two weeks, Janice had lost about fifteen pounds and wasn’t in great spirits. Who could blame her?

Many prayers were made for healing, yet Janice’s condition worsened, leaving me a bit bitter about the whole situation. Janice didn’t deserve this! She looked like death warmed over, which is better than death served cold, but still involves death, so I was worried about it.

Now during this time our local helper, Agatha, noticed Janice’s condition and was concerned. She asked to pray over Janice. Of course Janice agreed, and as Agatha prayed for Janice, the relationship between them changed from being a boss and an employee to being friends.

A veteran missionary explained to us that we come here and try to help people and fix problems because that’s what our job description is. But the locals can find it difficult to contribute to the relationship because they feel like there’s not much they can give us. We already have so much. But because Janice got sick, Agatha had an opportunity to contribute to the relationship in a meaningful way and now the relationship is stronger because of it. Suffering has its perks. I guess that’s easy to say when you’re not the one suffering.

Chris, the Country Director of our organization and a registered nurse, came to our house to check up on Janice and take a set of vitals. He found that Janice was severely dehydrated so he gave her three bags of IV fluid and told her to keep drinking fluids. Chris was consulting with a doctor at a large mission base up in Goroka who has worked in Papua New Guinea for thirty years and is familiar with tropical diseases. Chris would take another set of vitals the next day. If there wasn’t much improvement, Janice would have to go to Goroka to see the doctor in person.

Adi Gets Stitches

During all this we were at a birthday party for one of the many kids on base. I was taking a bite of cake when one of the kids came in and mentioned that Adi was bleeding. I nodded and took a sip of coffee. Bleeding is an excuse often used to acquire Band-Aids and nothing more.

“She’s kind of bleeding a lot,” the child clarified, and nervously wrung her hands.

I reluctantly put down my plate of cake and followed the concerned child down to sidewalk underneath the house. There I found Adi standing in a large pool of dark red blood and looking like she might get in trouble for bleeding on the sidewalk. She had stepped on an old cat food tin and gashed her foot open.

I stood there in a state of stationary panic. What do I do? That’s a lot of blood! Wait a minute, there’s a nurse upstairs. I don’t have to know what to do, I just gotta get her upstairs!

I swept Adi off her feet and carried her into the house. Chris, the guy I mentioned before, took a quick look and decided Adi needed stitches.

Since the local anesthetic in the medicine cabinet was outdated and not very effective, there was a lot of wailing. I find sewing difficult on its own. It’s much more difficult when whatever you’re sewing is yelling at you and thrashing around. So with that in mind, Chris did a great job. Admittedly the stitches would’ve look bad on an expensive suit, but they worked fine on Adi’s foot. It healed without any physical scars although Adi still carries an emotional one. If she even gets a splinter, she immediately assures me that it’s not that bad and I don’t have to ask Chris to look at it.

Janice Gets Sicker

That same night Janice woke up and began shaking like crazy, something I learned later was a phenomenon called “rigors.” I didn’t like it one bit.

The next morning Chris came and took another set of vitals. Janice was still dehydrated. She would have to go to Goroka.

Now we can’t just drive to Goroka. Wewak, where we live, isn’t connected by roads to any other major town. Lucky for us, our organization uses floatplanes to provide medivacs here in PNG and in a twist of fate, we experienced our ministry firsthand as Janice was flown to Goroka. We didn’t pay a cent and Janice flew out the same day, which was a huge blessing for us, both financially, logistically, and medically, as we'd come to find out. I can’t image how much of a blessing it is for people who make pennies a day and have even more urgent, life threatening conditions.

Unfortunately I couldn’t go along because I weighed too much. Goroka is a far haul for our little Cessna 206 so it takes more fuel to get there. Extra fuel means extra weight, which reduces the amount of weight available to haul cargo or people. Not only that, but the increase in elevation reduces the useful load as well. So I stayed at home with the kids while Janeen, the wife of one our pilots, went along to keep Janice company.

A report soon came back. Janice had received two more bags of IV fluid and been administered a blood test, a kidney function test, a Covid test, a malaria test, a dengue test, a typhoid test, and an erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR or sed rate) test, and probably other tests I’ve forgotten about. All those tests came back fine, with the notable exception of the sed rate test. The sed rate test measures inflation in the body. A normal person scores around 20. A very sick person hits at about 60. Janice's number came in at 100.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor said, “This is proof that you’re not faking it.”

His opinion is that Janice had a case of Zika or Chikungunya, neither of which he had a test for, and both of which are mosquito transmitted viruses with symptoms very similar to what Janice had. But the major crisis that was developing without us realizing it was that the severe dehydration coupled with a sinus infection had led to a bacterial infection. This led to the beginnings of sepsis, an infection in the blood. As a missionary in Papua New Guinea there’s a health crisis, which is bad, and then there’s a “Go to Australia” health crisis, which is far worse. Janice was on the verge of a “Go to Australia” health crisis.

In retrospect, God may not have miraculously healed my wife, but such was the series of events that we were saved from a much bigger health crisis. I’m grateful for that.

After a heavy course of antibiotics and plenty of fluids, Janice is on the mend. No one is more grateful for that than her husband and children. Well, except for Janice, of course.