Having a baby in Ukraine!

You are a young couple and you decide to start your family.  You find out you are pregnant and need to decide where you will seek medical care.  If you are one of the new Ukrainians you can choose to have your baby at a new private hospital.  The cost is only $10,000 and you have to sign a paper saying you understand a healthy baby cannot be guaranteed.  Understandably this is too expensive for most Ukrainians.

 The next alternative is to give birth at a government hospital.  In Ukraine you always have two obstetricians.  One is typically a consultant and the other actually delivers the baby.  When the time of delivery arrives, you call your first choice and pray they are not busy.  Of course, that is why you have a back up.

Mothers and babies usually remain in the hospital for 3 or 4 days for a vaginal delivery and 7 days for a C-section.  For follow-up the pediatrician from the polyclinic comes to your flat after you come home.

I can guarantee this information is up-to-date since our neighbor just above us is the young couple having a baby.  She was very excited to learn that I was a pediatrician.  She said I will be her new best friend.  I told her our twins born 24 years ago by C-section cost about $4,000 and that when I was born the cost was $150.  She was quick to add her father born during the Soviet days cost nothing!

How to treat your patient!

Thomas Syndenham(1624-1689), a famous English Christian physician known for his work in describing the illnesses associated with Group A Streptococcal infections, described the proper role of physician’s regarding the care of their patients. 

Quote: It becomes every person who purposes to give himself to the care of others, seriously to consider the four following things: First, that he must one day give and account to the Supreme Judge of all the lives entrusted to his care.  Second, that all his skill and knowledge and energy, as they have been given him by God, so they should be exercised for His glory and the good of mankind, and not for mere gain or ambition.  Third, and not more beautifully than truly, let him reflect that he has undertaken the  care of no mean creature; for , in order that he may estimate the value, the greatness of the human race, the only begotten son of God became himself a man, and thus ennobled it with His divine dignity, and far more than this, died to redeem it.  And fourth, that the doctor being himself a mortal human being, should be diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like sufferer.

It used to be a chicken!

As a medical missionary I no longer worry about payments from insurance companies. I pray I never did show too much concern for this aspect of medicine when I was in private practice. However, people are grateful when they receive care and want to show their appreciation. I am told doctors used to accept payment in chickens or potatoes in what we thought was a by-gone era.

Recently I saw a 9 month old with a cold who had kept his mom up one too many nights in a row. Now she was wondering if he might have an ear infection. They have a Ukrainian doctor but they rarely look into their patient’s ears, which is routine for visits in the USA. Why? First, Ukrainian pediatricians typically do not own an otoscope.   Second, this is the responsibility of the ENT doctor.

Well the child thankfully did not have an ear infection. The mother was so grateful about my seeing her child at the end of the visit she reached into her bag and pulled out a jar of Skippy peanut butter and a jar of cake icing. No it was not a chicken, but in Ukraine where you can not find good peanut butter or icing this was quite a treat and a sacrifice on the part of this thankful family.

A Great Missionary Day

Today was a great day.  After almost six years of living in Ukraine, I conducted my first meeting totally in Russian.  I have been praying a long time for God to enable me to speak more comfortably to those which He has placed a burden on my heart.  

Last night at 10 PM, my assistant and translator, Nika called to say she was ill and probably not be able to work the next day.  We had scheduled a meeting with the directors of two Ukrainian schools for disabled children to prepare for a conference coming up in May featuring Bob Buckendorf, a speech pathologist from Portland, Oregon.

Only Nika and I were holding down the fort at the office, since the rest of our team was on break.  It was too late to try to find another translator.  The phone numbers for the people I was meeting were at the office and there was no time to get to the office before the meeting.

I can’t say I was perfect linguistically or that I understood all that was said to me but their smiles and head nods indicated I was understood by them.  We have a basic plan of action, made decisions about what will happen, when it will happen and where it will happen.  I know who is going to be responsible for each phase of preparation.  We closed in prayer giving God the glory for the great things He has done.  Indeed, it was a great missionary day.   

Lessons in Driving

I had always heard from various people that Bostonians were notoriously the worse drivers in America.  However, they cannot truly compete with the drivers of Kyiv.  It is not uncommon to observe one lane of traffic suddenly turn into three or four lanes all going in the same direction taking up all the space in both directions.  If you need to travel in the opposite direction what do you do?  Drivers then move to the sidewalks, the fifth lane.

How do you learn such driving tactics?  A friend of mine is taking driving lessons.  He is nearing the completion of the course.  Each lesson is supposed to last approximately two hours.  Typically the first 45 to 60 minutes are spent drinking tea and talking.  With only 1 or 2 lessons remaining his instructor informed him he has not had enough driving experience to pass the driving test without providing an additional $6o to the examiner.  The best driver’s license money can buy. 

Despair turns to Hope

Weekly I meet with a group of Ukrainian physicians who are believers but need lots of encouragement when working in a very oppressive environment.  In most countries physicians are taught a very man centered view of medicine.  If only we could discover the cure for this disease, man could live for ever.  Christian physicians often behave only as doctors Monday through Saturday and Christians on Sunday.  Of course, this is not always the case, but the medical system does not allow them to express there Christian opinions freely without ridicule.

This is especially true in Ukraine where for the past ninty years science and evolution were promoted as the true basis for the philosophy of medicine.  Not only were Christian ideas ridiculed but there were economic consequences for holding such beliefs as well.  Christians were not promoted.  If you shared your faith with your patients you were removed from your position.  Despite being an independent country with one of the highest levels of religious freedom in the post-Soviet era compared to other countries in the former Soviet bloc, things have not changed much in the medical sphere.  Christian physicians are the overwhelming minority, making up only a small percentage, 1 or 2 %.

In our weekly meeting we have been examining how the Great Physician dealt with patients.  Previously these same physicians have been taught  how to share there faith with there patients in a course called The Saline Solution.   We studied how compassionate Jesus was in caring for His patients, as He proclaimed and revealed the truth of their condition to them.  You could visibly see the anguish on some faces and the joy on others as they wrestled with how they could share their faith with sensitivity, permission, and respect within the time constraints every doctor faces.

We ended our time with prayer for God to work in the hearts of their colleagues and for them to be the most Christ-like physicians towards their patients.  May they make the most of every opportunity to be Christians first, who happen to be doctors, seven days a week.  May God use health care providers to relieve the despair we all felt once, providing an everlasting hope to their patients. 

Despair

If you were alive about 2000 years ago and living in Jerusalem, imagine the despair you would feel today.  You were a disciple of the man they called Jesus.  Yesterday you were a witness to his brutal death.  What would you be thinking today?  You cannot fully describe all this man was to you since you began following him three years ago.  How do you make sense of what has happened.  Truly this is complete and total despair.

 What a difference a day makes.  We are blessed to know the rest of the story.  I can’t imagine any situation worse than this day for the disciples.  We have a living hope.  A future that cannot be taken away from us.  He died so that we may live.  He is alive to prove who He is.

Tomorrow we know the despair that is felt today will turn to joy.  On the streets of Ukraine people will greet each other saying, “Кристос воскес!  Воистину воскрес!” 

” He has risen!  He has risen indeed!”

A Sure Foundation

By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ (1Cor 3:10,11).

Every Wednesday evening I meet with a group of Christian physicians to build “A Sure Foundation” for healthcare in Ukraine. The expert builder or author is Dr. Patrick Pulliam.
The center of this study is Jesus Christ, the Great Physician. Despite being from different confessions we grab hold of the truth of Scripture and apply it to the practice of medicine. We become Bereans, searching for what is true about what we believe, being careful how we build placing each brick on a solid foundation.

Christian physicians are definitely in the minority in the medical workplace. They struggle with how to reach their colleagues and their patients in a system that is antagonistic to the Gospel. We pray for those doctors who are in authority in the Ukrainian medical system. May God soften their hearts and make them receptive to the truth that will bring healing to both body and soul, for themselves, their colleagues, their patients and their country.