#SaibaiRob Day 8- Mondayitis. Tired this morning, after my last call at midnight last night, I was rattled, and lay awake till 3 or so. The weekend started with overtime on Friday night and a call out that evening, then 4-5 calls on both Saturday and Sunday. The usual bits n pieces, URTIs, UTIs, assaults, and follow ups. That last call was a suspected food poisoning case at midnight last night. Id just drifted off after a restless start and was woken by a whole family of PNG nationals ( mum, dad 12 yo boy, 5 month old baby) presenting with what they called food poisoning. Now when you think food poisoning you think, diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping, fever and all symptoms gastric... Dont you? Nup . Not this mob. None of these symptoms at all. Not even a little. Their symptoms were neuropsychiatric, or something out of this world. Described as dizziness after eating some Deer and rice at 8 pm that evening. The spokesman (a 36 year old man) said it was only members of his family that were affected despite many other villagers eating the same stew. The information given to me was almost in code, like it was Taboo to speak of the symptoms. I attended to his assessment as objectively as I could. Vital signs -normal, GCS and neuro ons all normal. No ear aches ( thinking middle ear issues or Menieres ) Gait normal. No nystagmus (those funky dizzy eye movements you see on YouTube videos when a kid gets spun on an office chair) In fact he and his family had zero physical symptoms of anything but Tinea Alba (white skin) a chronic fungal skin infection that many many PNG villagers have. When drilling deeper into his presentation, he became quieter and quieter... Spooky !!! and almost in a whisper said that perhaps there was some magic in the food. He believed he and his family was hexed. Here, western medicine and third world cultural beliefs in black magic are common. Locally called Puripuri, this black magic phenomenon is not new to me, but at midnight on Sunday night, when it had been a long tiresome weekend, I felt the pangs of irritation, that these cultural practices would force a man and his whole family into a dinghy, and travel to Australia to be seen as an emergency. What do I do with that? I spoke with this patriarch. The head of a family that respected their father and husband. I told him that it was really not the time or environment, nor my area of expertise, and I asked him frankly what he wanted from me. His reply was cleaning. What? You want me to what? He said he didnt feel safe for his family to return to Siga tonight. He asked if I could do some God words for protection from the sickness po the pamle blo mi . Now two days ago I demonstrated in these blogs how sometimes we have to work outside of our comfort zone, when I was required to stitch that kids nose back together. Well here was just one more example of stepping out side the box. Effectively what this man was doing was asking for prayer. So my question to you is, have you ever had a similar situation where you have felt patient was asking for some sort of healing that wasnt traditional mainstream Western medicine. Have you ever been required to pray with or for a patient. Would you? Did you? Regardless of you own belief, if you knew that saying a prayer or singing a song or lighting a candle, or rubbing a crystal was going to bring real comfort to your patient, would you do it? I did pray with that man and his pamle (family). I didnt feel comfortable or fluent, or competent or confident or practiced; but I did it, and it eased this mans anguish. And isnt that what it is all about? This game we play. This quest for healing. To ease suffering? Rattles me a bit.... This job with few boundaries. ... All my blogs for this trip ect4healthsaibai.blogspot.au/
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 09:11:16 +0000
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