Women, Work, and the Wish to be a Princess.

Like most little girls born in the 1980's...or ever...I wanted to be a Disney princess. I wish I was one of those cool girls that could claim she was a tomboy and grew up playing sports, but I wasn't. As much as I deny it now my favorite colors were purple and pink and glitter for many years.

I wanted to be a princess but my choices were limited.  Jasmine dressed too skanky. Pocahontas rolled around in the grass with John Smith and sang about the spirits in the wind (so I still haven't seen that movie). Ariel had a bad attitude and disobeyed her dad so my parents didn't like her, although I somehow still pulled off naming my first kitten after her.  Snow White seemed safe but REALLY boring. Does she even talk?

Belle was the best...let's be real.  She has the best songs, she was brunette, she actually got to ride the horse without the prince and the golden ball gown was awesome.  The tea parties weren't bad either.  So yeah, I'd pick Belle although my lifelong dream to own a large feline always drew me towards Jasmine. But since I wasn't allowed to dress like her for Halloween she was out.

I have resolved to finish a book every month this year.  I know that's no big deal for most but I'm someone who has started nearly all the books on my shelf and probably finished 25% of them.  Unlike Belle I'm not really a reader. If I could be a tomboy and reader then maybe my life would be complete or at least I'd feel a lot better about myself.

I did finish Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg in January.  It challenged my life.  While I will resist going on another feminist rant with this post I want to share some of the most memorable moments of the book.  If you haven't read it you should. Male or female, it is important.

1) Ban Bossy.
Personally I think this movement is a little extreme and I was the little girl who was told daily that she was too bossy.  It did hurt. It did make me feel like I shouldn't speak up and it did make me feel disliked by many of my peers. However, asking people to refrain from using the word "bossy" seems a little silly to me.  Instead I think we need to take ownership of our bossiness.  Sheryl was called bossy and now she's the boss of facebook (next to Mark of course). Even early in college Sheryl remembers that as one of five recipients for a scholarship at Harvard (and the only woman) being the top of the class made life easier for males and made it harder for females. Being smart is good in a lot of ways, but it doesn't make you particularly popular or attractive to men...our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership qualities and put women with nurturing qualities...we believe not only that women are nurturing but that they should be nurturing above all else.  When a woman does anything that signals she might not be nice first and foremost, it creates a negative impression and makes us uncomfortable.

Solution? Suck it up and own your success. Sheryl argues that more women should be in leadership.  It's really easy to hate [bossy] senior women when there are only a few...but if 50% of the top jobs were held by women it would just be really difficult to dislike that many people. Powerful women must be less of an exception.

2) Forget Fear.
Women statistically do not speak up in meetings because they fear seeming like they are nagging or negative (story of my life). We fear that constructive criticism will come across as just plain old criticism. We fear that by speaking we will call attention to ourselves which will open us up to attack. We must speak with delicate honestly rather than brutal honesty. I am terrible at this but working on it.

3) Get Married.
The closer I get to thirty the clearer it becomes that single women my age tend to fall in to two categories 1: the OH MY GOD I'M GOING TO BE 35 AND SINGLE AND MY EGGS ARE DYING I MUST FIND A MAN TODAY TO BE TRULY HAPPY category or 2: the I'm INDEPENDENT and FREE and don't NEED a man and I'm not that interested in marriage because I'm career driven and kids are cool but I'm too selfish to have them right now category.  I have wavered through both categories but tend to fall into category 2 on most PMS-free days.

Sheryl would probably tell category 2 to humble yourself and get married. I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is. I don't know of one woman in a leadership position whose life partner is not fully supportive of her career. No exceptions. And contrary to the popular notion that only unmarried women can make it to the top, the majority of the most successful female business leaders have partners. 26/28 women who have served as CEOs of fortune 500 companies were married.

4) Discuss Role Definition and Ditch Divorce. 
Statistics show that the risk of divorce reduces by about 50% when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework. Enough said. Or at least enough said by me.

5) Free yourself from Having It All.
It's a lie. It makes women (and men) feel like they are falling short. No one has it all. In a Tina Fey interview she stated that the single most offensive question she is asked as a woman is "how do you juggle it all?" People constantly ask me with that accusatory look in their eyes... 'You're really fucking it all up, aren't you?'

Remember that done is better than perfect. [Balancing a career with a family] will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don't be frightened: YOU CAN ALWAYS CHANGE YOUR MIND."

6) You have a choice.
Career+family. Family. Career.  It's no ones choice but yours and there is not a wrong answer. Women have been subtly striving all our lives to prove that we have picked up the torch that feminism provided. That we haven't failed the mothers and grandmothers who made our ambitions possible. And yet, in a deep and profound way we are failing. Because feminism wasn't supposed to make us feel guilty, or prod us into constant competitions over who is raising children better, organizing more cooperative marriages, or getting less sleep.  It was supposed to make us free - to give us not only choices but the ability to make these choices without constantely feeling that we somehow got it wrong. ~Debora Spar

I chose not to be a princess. As I got older the castle seemed kind of restricting and I wanted  to try playing sports and riding horses without waiting for the prince to wake me up. For now I am career focused because I have to save enough pennies to purchase my own tiger and while my career is my pride, joy and main focus right now... I reserve the right that it may not be f o r e v e r.

For research studies and statistics please see Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. 

Deal, listen to Georgia.

I do not claim to be an expert on the subject.  I haven’t even tried, but let’s face it…very few of us are.  I have decided I want to write my simplest thoughts about why I believe Georgia needs Medicaid expansion.  Some think that my Emory education has corrupted my once super conservative brain but I just believe that becoming a Nurse Practitioner has enlightened me.

When looking for jobs in the primary care setting, or even specialty offices like Infectious Disease or Cardiology it has become blatantly obvious that most doctors offices do not accept Medicaid.   I used to have it on my "non negotiable job list" that I would not work somewhere that does not accept Medicaid.  This has proven to be nearly impossible.

Why?  The easiest explanation is that Medicaid doesn’t pay.  A Physicians Assistant recently told me that he makes about $10 on a visit seeing one of his chronically ill HIV patients.  Medicaid reimburses physicians at about 59%of what Medicare pays them (some complicated policy has changed this temporarily in most states, thank God).  This is why it is fairly easy to find a physician seeing lots of old folks and zero poor folks. 

I had a renowned Infectious Disease doc sit with me in discussion recently and say, “Well, if Georgia was expanding Medicaid I’d have a job for you, but since Deal isn’t, I just don’t have the money or clientele” (because they don’t qualify for Medicaid they can’t come to his office). This doctor serves a huge number of low income HIV+ patients in Atlanta and if Medicaid was expanding many more of these AIDS patients would be funded through the (state+federal) government program and be able to see a primary care physician rather than an ER doc. I have yet to meet a physician in Atlanta that does not believe Medicaid should expand. 

So why should you care?  The arguments I hear are often are “why expand a broken system?” and “I don’t want my taxes to pay for them.”

Well, first of all the entire health care system is broken.  We can all agree to that, though none of us can agree on how to fix it. I believe expansion is a good step.

Secondly, let’s think of Calvin.  A 54 year old man who has lived on the street for most of his life, noticed that he has a large lump growing on his jaw.  He doesn’t think much about it because he doesn’t have insurance (or Medicaid…he doesn’t have an address).  He continues his life as the tumor grows.  He thinks about going to the doctor a few times but there are very few doctors in his area who would agree to see him even if he had Medicaid because the reimbursement rate is so low.  So the lump grows.

Eventually Calvin is in so much pain and discomfort from the now open, oozing tumor on his face he goes to the public hospital in the area that cannot turn patients away for lack of insurance.  By this time, two years later, he’s diagnosed with stage four cancer with metastasis to his brain.  The physician can’t live with himself doing nothing for Calvin so he is put through hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of chemo, radiation, ICU stays, intubation, life support and multiple physician consults to try to save what can no longer be saved. 

Who do we think is paying for this patient who now has a medical bill of at least six figures with no insurance to speak of? 

It is beyond the scope of this post for me to discuss how non-profit hospitals like this one survive and how your taxes pay for them to keep their doors open, but what I hope to help us remember is that all of this might have been prevented with primary care.

If Calvin had Medicaid, if primary care physicians in Atlanta took Medicaid as payment, and if he had been seen his first week rather than his second year he might still be alive. 

This is why movements such as Moral Monday make claims like, “If Georgia doesn't expand Medicaid 600 more Georgians will die this year.”

Our ER’s are overrun with patients like Calvin. Patients that come in during the last days of their lives because no one would accept them earlier.  Atlanta Magazine put an article out about a year ago about the story of a single mother who knew that she had breast cancer for nine years and came to Grady only when her breast had fallen off.  She couldn’t afford physician copays, couldn’t take time off work and feared the payment system as a whole. 

Hospital funding and politics is tricky.  I know very little.  But what I do know is that if primary care physicians don’t raise the bar and catch cancer and HIV and lung and heart disease early it becomes an astronomical hospital admission bill that the tax payers are left to settle.  It also becomes a lot of dead people that did not have to die.

Physicians must start accepting Medicaid and the only way that is going to happen is if it is expanded.  I used to be upset with physicians for not taking Medicaid, after all it is their choice, but now I realize that no one would choose to do something that will put her out of business. We have a frightening shortage of primary care physicians currently and this shortage is only expected to increase as other aspects of Obamacare go into affect this year. 

Why is there this shortage do you ask? Well clearly it’s because primary care physicians don’t want to pay taxes into a broken system either. 

japan y'all

My adorable friend Emily deemed "Japan y'all" the hashtag for our trip as four Georgia bred-if-not-born college friends got to spend 9 days and Thanksgiving together on the mainland.   Richard and I have been close since his freshman year of college.  I was his RA.  Somewhere along the way I introduced him to my friend Ashley and he introduced me to his lovely girlfriend-now-wife Emily.  That's the short version of the friendships.

I consider myself fairly cultured.  I've been to about 13 countries give or take the layovers and have seen most of the US.  Japan was my first exposure to anything Asian.  I realize that Asia is a massive place but when most of us think about Asian culture Japan, China, and likely the Koreas come to mind.  Or at least that's what comes to mind for me.

I've always enjoyed traveling, not only because I simply love learning how big the world is but I'm also baffled by how vastly different it is.  Other than traveling to Europe on four different occasions everywhere else I have been would be classified as a developing country.  This was somewhat of an adjustment for me in Japan as the wealth, classiness, safety, technology, the brillance of the people amazed me.  I guess in all honestly I don't think about Japan. My first desire to travel there arose when my friend Richard got stationed there 6 months ago and I can't say that it was in my top ten list of places I want to visit. (India is still #1 and has been since I was 16).

But how amazing it was. It took me three days to warm up to it.  The people are very quiet, reserved, almost cold.  They don't smile often and don't seem to talk to Americans except on rare occasions. They are always kind and helpful when approached but at first I was a little put off by how formal everything seemed.  Void of color.  Similar to NYC or Paris the people dress very well and almost entirely in black. It seems to blend in to their demeanor.

But then there are the cartoons!  Women dressed to the nines would have Hello Kitty iPhone cases and even teenage boys would have stuffed animals on their book bags. Every sign possible was illustrated in animation and color. It was mind boggling. Beautiful in its own way.

Perhaps I was most impressed by the tidiness.  There is no garbage anywhere...it's almost impossible to find a garbage can. Which.. I realize...makes no sense. Richard has a theory that every woman's purse is stuffed full of garbage. We went to a Japanese soccer game and every person cleans up after their self. They then stand in line to throw their garbage away when the game is over.  They sort it.  Similar to Whole Foods...into at least four different recycle bins.  They waste not. After having briefly lived in a country where it is the norm to eat your lunch out of a styrofoam to-go box and throw the box on the street when you're finished I found this very humorous.  Americans would also never take this kind of time!  Let's be real...I rarely throw my garbage away correctly the four times a year I enter a Whole Foods.

It's doubtful I will ever return to Japan.  I have an ambition to travel to a new country every year. I've been doing it for about six years now. Japan has been checked off of that list.

I am so thankful I went.  I got to spend Thanksgiving in a foreign country for a second time.  It makes one grateful for many things.  For diversity, for color, for new foods, for culture, for America, for creativity, for our wide world, for what makes us different, for what makes us the same and for a God who transcends it all.

2013 is coming to a close and I am more than thankful but my experiences in Japan will rank among its greatest memories.

fighting to be a feminist.

Three years ago I purchased a book at Perimeter Church's bookstore titled Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood by Piper and Grudem. I was in a new promising relationship and I decided that maybe it was time for me to figure out what I was supposed to know.  I read about four pages and put it on my bookshelf. The book is over an inch thick, paperback.

I then progressed to thinking, well, I'm never gonna read that book but some(boy) is going to be super impressed that I have it on my shelf. I'll look cool when he comes over. Through the years my thoughts progressed to realizing that the kind of man that would find that book sitting on my shelf attractive is not one that would work for me. Oddly, the book still sits, receipt shoved in the cover, dog ear four pages in on my living room shelf. Maybe that's why my love life and my sister's (roommate's) seem cursed in 2013.

I'm not even sure what a feminist is but I want to be one. I have been learning lately that I am my own worst enemy in this endeavor. I disgust myself. 

For most of my life my best friends were boys. Especially in college, other than three great girlfriends almost every person who pulled me through was a male. Just to be clear, I did not date in college, these were platonic relationships. I've always been close to my (male) pastors and even my mother would agree that I'm a daddy's girl. It's taken me years to realize that I regard advice from men much more highly than I do from women. If I could choose a teacher, even for my French class, I'd pick a male every time. My best friend from my masters program is a 51 year old male and he is now my advisor on all things medical. If you've ever heard me talk about my future children you've probably heard me say that I'm only having boys. I realize that even genetically I don't get to contribute to that decision, but I'm still only having boys. 

Even as a nurse I have always preferred male patients. They are less complicated, easier to manage, are more fun to joke around with and at least in Georgia, they love the SEC. I'd sign up to care for the grumpy old man over anyone who possessed a vagina, every time.

Just a few months ago I again became disgusted with myself in my endeavor to become a feminist when I realized that the Tanzanian child whose tuition I pay is of course, MALE. I thought back to my experience visiting that school and would guess that about 65-70% of the children, supported by American money, are boys. 

You can see I'm an excellent feminist. What I have been wrestling through is why am I this way? Was it how I was raised in a evangelical christian southern community where I was taught that the best (though not only) model is for the mom to stay home with the kids, the dad to bring home the bacon and the preacher to wear a tie?  

Is it because in Georgia women still wear hose in the summer and too often stand behind their husbands or in the kitchen?  Is it because maybe the Bible really is misogynistic and I just never realized it?  I remember spending prayer meetings in college begging God to show me how to be a Proverbs 31 wife...ahem...woman.  While that passage is still quite valuable, is it all relevant?  Don't get me wrong, I actually know how to sew but I change the oil in my car and mow the grass more often. (Two things my father insisted his girls know how to do before we graduated from high school). 

"Women hold up half of the sky"...that's the proverb Half the Sky gets its name from. It's arguably the most influential thing I've read in the last year. It's where nearly every feminist thought in my head comes from. I learned that most African girls miss a week of school every month because they have no sanitary napkins. Five to seven days a month!?! That means that the small percentage of teenage girls who are in school in many developing countries are missing 25% of their education simply due to female bodily function.  This should cause outrage. 

Because of Half the Sky I follow nearly every facebook page that opposes child brides, supports votes and education for women and preaches against female genital mutilation.  I don't have enough feet for all the soap boxes I'd like to stand on. But is that enough?  What does a "like" on facebook mean anyway? 

An article this week in The Wall Street Journal said that women in 2012 are making 76.5 cents on the male dollar down from 77 in 2011.  My little sister understands this more than anyone as she works in a company where men with the same education and years of experience often outrank women by two or more levels and earn a 33% higher salary. Why are we still working for companies like this? Furthermore, why do they still exist?

I used to honestly believe that bit the church tells young women that men are supposed to be the leaders in companies and families because overall they are more level headed and make less emotional decisions. I used to believe the sermon saying the reason mankind fell was at least in part, because Adam didn't act like a man and Eve did. Since then I've actually dated a few men. I have usually been the less emotional, more level-headed member in the relationship. This is a personality type.  Not a gender description.  

Rachel who I have mentioned many times before stated, when I was a little girl, I knew I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up, except a pastor...the whole thing bothered me a little bit because it made me feel like God had reserved all of the important, spiritual jobs for the boys, like he thought that girls are second best. As I've mentioned before I've never really thought that any job is second best, but I will say that as a girl who wanted to be a missionary from the time she was thirteen...I always thought I'd have to have a husband to be one. 

I am not sure where this frame of mind came from.  Was it my church, my family, my college ministry or my culture?  I don't even care.  All I know is that it exists in myself and I would argue that it also exists in many other women I know, especially Christian women. 

Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending EQUAL political, economic and social rights for women. I am on board with that.  

My future daughters will be too. 

relating to the nakedness.

I have 14 students. As a part-time job between finishing my masters and getting a job as an NP I decided to teach.  I take seven first semester nursing students into the hospital for eight hours, two days a week.  For most it's their first experience in a hospital. It's been a little crazy.  It has been full of joy.

I did it for three reasons.  Mainly because I needed the money, but also because I loved precepting students when I worked in the ICU...watching them "get it" for the first time and understand what it's like to be responsible for another living body, a living soul.  It's remarkable.   I also did it because I had a terrible clinical instructor in nursing school.  For some unknown reason she hated me.  She hated me and I wasn't used to it.  I had always been the teachers-pet-my-parents-are-in-education kinda person.   My how that has changed.

Regardless of my reasons I am glad I took the job.  It has not all been easy.  There are the slackers and the strugglers and the know-it-alls but when I look at the whole experience I have been so blessed.  I often forget to write about the joy in my life because I don't need to process it like I do the sorrow and anger. However, I'm learning to take more time to process everything these days.

A few weeks ago a patient allowed me to perform a full head-to-toe assessment on him while my students watched.  He began to tell us his story and I tried not to look at my watch. He told us about his job with the CDC and how he's worked all over the world...I listened a little bit. He told us that healthcare providers are among the most important people on the planet.  He told us that he could not fully express his appreciation for nurses.

I was beginning to feel like I was in a Johnson & Johnson commercial when I noticed that at least three of the seven students in the room were in tears.  They were so moved by his affirmation that they were doing the right thing.

I had forgotten that part.  How terrifying it is to stick someone with a needle for the first time.  To inflict pain upon a body even for a good cause.  To see someone naked....their naked broken body and often their naked soul.  To be the one that is with them for twelve hours while they walk for the first time on a new joint or experience what it's like to function with the tumor gone.  To listen when a patient knows what they want to say but is unable to express it because of the blood sitting in their brain. I had forgotten what it's like to be that person and the whole time wonder if you're supposed to be.  If you're cut out for it.

My students are probably most afraid of waking patients up when they are sleeping and causing pain. These are two things that I don't even think about anymore. Almost never. At first it was adorable and now it's just annoying. But I'm realizing that even eight weeks later my students are still trying to figure out how they are supposed to relate.  As a friend, as a servant, as an enforcer, as helper, as a nurse.  It took me at least two years to get the patient/nurse relationship down.  To be in charge and yet always be the most sympathetic person in the room.  To negotiate the things the patient doesn't want to do and yet allow her to feel as if you are her biggest fan.

I probably tell my students ten times a day that patients are just people.  Just talk to them like they are people!  They aren't animals in a zoo. They are a lot more rationale than you think.  Unless of course they are 85 and demented and think that you're trying to kill them...but they'll learn that communication too.

It's been an incredible job to read my students' journals each week and see them progress from questioning what in the world they were thinking entering nursing to now being confident that they are right where they are supposed to be. Affirmation is such a vital part of moving forward. Their patients, their peers and hopefully their clinical instructor have helped them to see what it's like to work among the nakedness.

I know it's cliche to say that my students have taught me more than I have taught them...it's probably not even true. But they have reminded me what it's like to care in a different way.  To be touched by a patient's....a person's thankfulness and to be moved by their pain.  To take time to listen without looking at your watch. To approach their nakedness with a heart that still feels something.

Nurses need to be reminded of these things often. Maybe we all do. I'm glad my students have reminded me.

the Jesus in Atlanta.

This is what I don’t understand.  Rachel spends an entire chapter talking about how she felt the closest to Jesus in years working with orphans and widows in India.

I get that. I get what it’s like to rock Tanzanian orphans to sleep that rarely feel physical touch. I get what it’s like to take food and medicine to widows in mud huts.  I even get what it’s like to walk with a 17 year old HIV+ girl through the decision to place her son in a Haitian orphanage so that he would receive the treatment he needed.  I get how it feels to hold her while she weeps and watch a white lady take him away.

I can’t really say that Jesus was always on the forefront of my mind as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and my desire to help people eat and fight off disease and live another day was more often my focus.  But I get that part. The part about how Jesus is often seen among the least of these.

What I don’t get is why Rachel makes it sound like I have to be in one of those places to feel close to Jesus.  To feel like I can make a difference. To have a spiritual awakening. 

I think that’s crap.  I hope it is.

I know that the reformed theology which I’ve heard since the age of five, and finally began to grasp around seventeen plays a role.  I know that everything in life is spiritual.  That it’s all sacred.  That I can equally honor God working a 9 to 5 selling popsicles or serving in a developing country.  I’ve never struggled with those questions… probably because I was always the girl that wanted to live in the mud hut…but regardless…I get that part.

What I don’t understand is this feeling.  Why is it that I (or Rachel too in this case) must travel to Haiti or Tanzania or Honduras or India and work with the orphans or the widows or the dying to feel Jesus?

I don’t buy that.  I don’t believe it. But I do feel like it's true. 

In India I was introduced to the kingdom of heaven- not as is exists in some future state but as it exists in the here and now, where the hungry are fed with both physical and spiritual bread, where the sick are saved from both their diseases and their sins, where an illiterate widow taught me more about faith than any theologian ever could, and where children from the slums sing with God. In India, I learned that the gospel is still special.  Jesus still matters and can make a difference in people’s lives.

I don’t want to have to go to India to be reintroduced.  

I want the Jesus in Atlanta to still matter. 

that monkey book.

I've gotten so far away from writing over the last three years. Sometimes I am not sure who I have become or what happened to that nurse after she came home from working abroad for a few months. I miss her in a lot of ways.

I am learning that she is buried somewhere deep inside.

You may have heard all the rage about Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans. If you haven't heard of it you should just stop reading this post and order the book instead. I am 109 pages in and I could have written nearly every word myself. Other than attending a private Christian college most of what Rachel writes about is my life.

I am learning that keeping it all inside helps no one. Least of all me.

I started reading about Jesus last night. To be honest it isn't something I've really done since I lived on the small island of Hispaniola. Sure, I've read a few "Utmost for His Highest" posts and attend church on the regular. But really feeling like I know the Christ part of the "Christian" I claim? I couldn't even tell you how long it's been.

Rachel and I would be friends. She too thought she knew all the answers and from what I can tell so far she was overwhelmed by an Arab woman being murdered on public television following a gang rape...something about her being disloyal to her husband. Christianity says she is now in hell. Rachel saw the footage and it turned her angry. Angry and full of questions. I get easily angered by stuff like that. I always have. Over the years my unfocused anger has simply turned to apathy. And apathy to complete and utter indifference.

I wish that I knew what my reason was...that I could remember my Arab woman that made everything different. I don't.

Some of it comes from death I've seen. The poverty. Some from the fact that I just like my non-Christian friends a lot better than my Christian ones. Some of it is simply that I don't trust people and I don't trust God. Much of that is rooted in the chaos that left scars on my soul working in a Haitian hospital. Some of it is from watching my hospice patients die and in that moment wondering if their soul actually goes some place. Most of it is that somewhere in all of those messes I forgot about the man. The man that was God that came and loved and died. I know that if I can't believe in him and his mission then none of the rest of it matters anyway.

So I started reading about Jesus last night. Some of it was inspired by Rachel and her questions. Some of it is simply because my soul has been aching for a couple of weeks and I know that there must be something that can make it feel whole. Something more than lots of wine with the greatest girlfriends a gal could ask for.

Rachel says that her most honest answer to the question, "why are you a Christian?" is that she was born in the United States of America. As was I. I was born in the Bible Belt to phenomenal Christian parents who work in ministry, in the perfectly reformed church that knows the answers to all theological wonderings, to the middle class, straight, Caucasian, in 1985. I "won the cosmic lottery" as she calls it.

Unfortunately, that has been my honest answer to that question since October of 2010.

I realize that there is only one person who can possibly change my answer. His name is Jesus.

my thoughts about KONY

I’ve been wanting to write and felt so void of words. Finally a topic has presented itself that I cannot stand silent on. I offer no solution...only thoughts.



If you are on facebook you have already seen it. It’s taking social media by storm and millions of people will know who he is in little time. Even if they never watch the video.

While the KONY 2012 campaign has exploded the last few days several people are challenging the idea (though not really opposing, who could?). I must say that I agree with some of their concerns.

The financing is somewhat of a joke to me…many people are claiming that Invisible Children doesn’t have open or accountable records and therefore you shouldn’t given them your money. Most of the world lives on dollars a day, so if you want to give your dollars to this cause I think that’s great. Americans have more money than they know what to do with. Enough said.

The issue that really confuses and frustrates me once again is our American elitists attitude. IC needs to recognize that we MUST empower the African people to promote and produce justice & integrity in their leadership and social structure. We cannot do this for them. I don’t know how we do this exactly. But recognizing them for starters would help.

“…though President Museveni must be integral to any solution to this problem, I didn’t hear him mentioned once in the 30-minute video. I thought that this was a crucial omission. Invisible Children asked viewers to seek the engagement of American policymakers and celebrities, but – and this is a major red flag – it didn’t introduce them to the many Northern Ugandans already doing fantastic work both in their local communities and in the diaspora. It didn’t ask its viewers to seek diplomatic pressure on President Museveni’s administration….

And as far as President Museveni is concerned, my thoughts are these: if thousands of British children were being kidnapped from their towns each year and recruited into an army, you can bet that David Cameron would be facing some very, very serious questions in the Commons. You can bet that he would be grilled on why, years after the conflict began, there were still about a million of his citizens slowly dying in squalor in ill-equipped refugee camps. You can also bet that, after twenty-odd years of this happening on his watch, he wouldn’t still be running the country.”

This is what I’m talking about!? Instead of sending American troupes to hunt through the African bush when they probably don’t even know which snakes are poisonous, why aren’t we encouraging Ugandan leadership to do more. To be more.

Let me stop here and say that I am outraged that Kony continues on. I remember seeing the first IC video sitting on a floor with 30+ college students eight years ago and being completely outraged. If given the chance I would myself take a gun to Kony’s head but I cannot tell you how much I would rather hand the gun to a Ugandan. One who has lived in fear for decades. One who might have killed his own parents under Kony’s command. One whose face is now mutilated. We cannot understand or relate to this. And we are naïve if we even try.

This worries me even more…

“…the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter.

Amercian intervention isn’t always all “Tears of the Sun.” There are consequences and we must remember that! If Kony begins to feel more pressure from the USA I can’t imagine how things might change for his child army.

The problem with all these words is that I offer little solution. I am not saying that we shouldn’t support Invisible Children. I think that we should. However I don’t support the idea of sending Americans to Uganda or elsewhere to “fix things” and I wish that rather than trying to get in touch with Ryan Seacrest we were finding ways to support the struggling leadership in Eastern Africa.

As with most issues of injustice we can’t attack them guns blazing with tunnel vision. There is always more to consider. Especially when anything African is involved. Any amount of time spent on that continent will teach you that life isn’t and never was the way it is in the United States. We must support, promote and empower African people to have the courage to continue doing the right things.

Left Behind.

Last week I received an email from Save a Child's Heart, an NGO working in Haiti out of Israel. I had been in contact with them in October of 2010 as you can see below. According to the emails my friend Kensia will finally be receiving a life-saving heart surgery. I was under the impression that the entire case had been dropped with no one to follow up. I was wrong.



From: Jessica Scott
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2010 10:52 PM
To: Save a Childs Heart
Subject: Child in Haiti needing treatment

Hello Dawn,

My name is Jessica and I am a Registered Nurse currently working in Port-au-Prince, Haiti following the earthquake in January. I am an American here for 6 months helping to reorganize a hospital. I have come across a 15 year old girl named Kensia. She was evaluated by a retired Cardiothoracic surgeon volunteering here last month and has been determined to need an aortic valve replacement. I am not very experienced with hearts but here are some of his notes...

I have been looking for an organization such as yours for several weeks now and I wondered if this specific case is the kind of thing you take on. From what I have read and seen there is no heart surgery in Haiti at this time, so I have been seeking options in the US, Dominican, and elsewhere.


Thank you so much for your time,
Jessica Scott, RN
Hopital Adventiste de Haiti



On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 7:16 AM, Astrid Celestin wrote: you were cced.

Dear Dawn,

Below please find original email where you referred us Kensia.

Jessica, in the meantime, we obtained visas for Kensia and her mother, they should be traveling at the end of this month. The surgery is paid for...

Thanks,
Astrid and Emmeline


Praise God.

"Now this is the confidence that we have in Him..."

February 18th at 11:30 am: Brooke Beck wrote to me, "Yvens is home and it was all a success!!!" These were perhaps the most encouraging, utterly joyful words I have heard from Haiti since leaving on December 15th. It baffles me that while looking back at my blog posts from Haiti, I never mentioned this child. I started to blog about him in October...but wasn't ever able to finish. It's a long story, one that began for Brooke in February of 2010 when a then one year old baby came to HAH following a surgery for a congenital imperforated anus (there was no opening in his bottom for poop to come out when he was born). He had surgery that opened his bottom and a colostomy was placed for him to poop thru until this anus was patent. He would wait several months with his rectum being dilated (from what I understand) until the colostomy is able to be reversed and the child's digestive tract will function normally.

Due to the lack of qualified surgeons in Haiti, Brooke and I followed Yves (he was a twin raised along with a second brother by his mother who has moved to Port-au-Prince leaving her family in the countryside to be close to hospitals that could care for her son). Yves's dad had left the scene shortly after he realized that his son would have medical problems. Colostomy's are stinky, messing things to deal with in the cleanly America. Imagine having one on a baby that doesn't understand why his poop is coming out of his side. Imagine living in a tent with limited access to clean water. Imagine having no properly fitting colostomy bags (to collect the stool coming out). Imagine changing ABD pads 4-6 times a day to keep your child's skin from getting raw from leaking stomach acid. Imagine being completely dependent on two white girls who may leave the country at any time leaving you without a solution to your child's predicament. Imagine the stress of a single, jobless mother raising three boys under four in a city far from home. That's the story behind the story.

Brooke and I (but mostly Brooke) cared for this family for months. We gave them free diapers and ABD pads, cream and sometimes food. Brooke often took them groceries as they were living very close to the hopsital. We searched and searched for a surgeon coming that might be able to reverse the colostomy within the correct time frame.

In September Brooke and I were both out of the country. I was in the Dominican Republic on a break and Yves's mother brought him to the hospital. She was always very persistent and hopeful that someone might "fix" her baby...although Brooke and I assured her that we were looking and would contact her if ever a surgeon came available.

The week I was absent (and Brooke had changed jobs) a General Surgeon was at the hospital. He saw the child (without any history given) and decided that he could probably figure out how to operate on him. Colostomy reversals seem pretty basic to General Surgeons I guess...however, when your specialty is Trauma Surgery on adults you probably shouldn't touch a 2 year old's GI tract. Even in Haiti. (This is a common misconception in Haiti..."It's better to do something than nothing at all." NO. No, it's not, if you don't know what you're doing and you haven't even seen it since Residency!...but alas, that is another soap box).

Yvens was operated on, and it was thought to be a success. Another constant problem in Haiti is good follow up after surgery. This General Surgeon was there for a week, but after his departure we would have no General Surgeon coming for over a month. There would be no one to follow...other than me. An RN of 2.5 years.

I returned from the DR the day before the surgeon left. He explained his patient to me (that I knew quite well) and told me about the surgery. I was overwhelmed. I was so excited that the surgery was done and hopefully a success. But I was scared out of my mind that something would go wrong and I wouldn't have a doctor to fix it. He wasn't confident. He told me that the surgery had been difficult and he thought that the intestines would hold but he wasn't sure. He looked at me and said, "Jessica, it's either going to do fine or the intestines will tear and he will die, fast." The next morning, a Saturday I believe, the surgeon left.

Tuesday morning Yven's mother was there early. Before I even came downstairs. I ran into her in the hallway at about 6:45am and my plans for the day went out the window. She handed me a screaming baby with an open insicion in his side, red and warm, leaking stool. I almost lost it then and there. We had no doctors even qualified to assess such a case at the time. Shit. Literally. Shit everywhere. She saw how scared I was in my eyes. I didn't lie to her. This is really serious I told her. He needs surgery and he needs it now and I don't have a surgeon who can do it. I told her I'd try everything.

I was still pretty new to doing things on my own since Brooke's departure. I didn't have a lot of friends or connections in the city, though by blackberry was full of names I didn't know. I stood in the ER exam room with Yvens, his mother, and a translator and I stared at my phone. I prayed. I sent a massive text message to every medical contact in the blackberry. I didn't know any of the people.

"Does anyone know of a Pediatric Surgeon in Haiti? I need one immediately. I have a baby that will die within days."

I waited.

"Who is asking?" came the only reply.

"My name is Jessica and I'm an RN at the Adventist Hospital in Diquini."

"This is Heidi from MSF Carrefour (Doctors Without Borders not even a mile away from us). I have a Pediatric Surgeon who was assigned here but we can't really use her specialty. She is available and ready to work. She can come right away."

The next five days were a blur. The surgeon, Chandrika, my answer to prayer, came and assessed the child. Wanted to give him another 24hrs to see if the fistula would resolve on its own. When it didn't she came to our hopsital, in an unfamiliar OR with staff she'd never met and performed a difficult (because of the lesions) surgery that saved Yvens life. I stood in the OR and watched. She kept him from getting septic and dying. She was not able to repair the intestinal wall...there was too much damage... Instead she reopened the colostomy. This meant that he would need ANOTHER attempt at colostomy closure in three months, with likely no surgeon in the country to do it. But he was alive and healthy. Colostomy and all.


Since the end of December Brooke and I have been searching high and low for a Pediatric Surgeon that would come to Haiti for this one surgery. Seemed like a lofty aspiration, but we had to try. After all, our hospital almost killed this child and it was our obligation to see him through. We wrote emails to doctors and hospitals all over the country. We mentioned it when we were in the States and all to what seemed like dead ends.

On February 9th I got this gchat from Brooke:
Brooke: waiting to hear more but they (Yvens and family) are in Cange (at the PIH hospital) for the week and its looking good. Thanks for your help and will let you know...

On February 11th I got this email forwarded from Brooke:
Hi Brooke,
So Dr. Mooney and I saw Yvens and we will try to do his case either tomorrow or Friday. We sent for some lab work I will give her a call tomorrow once we get our schedule together.
I will keep you updated,
David

On February 12th this one from Brooke:
Yvens got his operation today. I have only talked with Fevil so I don't know all the details...but wow...a year later it is happening!!

And on February 13th:
Done over a year later...Yvens is home and it was all a success!!! VERY HAPPY...


1 John 5:14-15
Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.

a year ago...

I feel like I have to write a post today, but it's hard to know what to say. A year ago a massive 7.0 earthquake hit the tiny island of Hispaniola, rocking Haiti and destroying the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince. Hopefully we all know that by now. Hopefully some of us remember. Hopefully a few of us care.

I've read more articles than I can count and they say the same thing. It's not much better. The people are still homeless and hurting. Jobless and distressed. Atlanta's Eleven Alive news gave Haiti about 15 seconds this morning. They sent their pity and the anchors' solum faces.

When thinking back on the last year I can only really reflect on my own heart.

Today, a year ago I was glued to CNN. I had always liked Anderson Cooper, but for the first time in my life I respected him. I watched him carry a teen bleeding from his head through the streets while a pastor that I listen to fairly often watched a Haitian bleed to death in the street from behind a guarded wall. Who would have guessed the celebrity would play the good samaritan?

I'm not sure I've ever been so angry. So passionate about something that I knew so little about. Before January of 2010 I could have told you very little about Haiti. I knew it was in the Caribbean. I knew the people were black. I knew it was poor. That's it.

A year later I know her heart. I know her people, bits of her history. I know her streets, her stresses and her struggles. I know pieces of her trials. Her health care crisis, her flawed justice system. Her desperation. Everyday I'm learning more as I read and read. But mostly I know what I have learned about myself because of her.

I am blessed. I am connected. I am healthy. I am wealthy and secure. I am educated. I have opportunities. I have hope. I have it easy.

I think everyone "culture shocks" in their own way. I don't really know my way, but I don't feel guilty. I don't feel like I should get rid of all my stuff and stop wearing make-up. I don't even feel like I shouldn't have spent the last four days at a ball game with fans screaming at a bunch of college students.

Our countries differ so vastly that it's difficult to even understand. How can two places so close to each other be so different?

But in reality the people are very much the same. We are self-centered and self-serving. We are passionate and praise-seeking.

We were created by Him and for Him. We are His image. We are needy. We long for support and relationship. We are hungry. We hurt. We love and we long. We long for something better...better than the sunsets in the Caribbean or the nightlife in the States. We want something that is going to last. Something that is going to make the day worth living. Whether we are stuck in a job we hate, selling fruit on a crowded dusty street, the coach of the BCS Champions, or a stay at home mom...we all want significance. Eternal significance.

I didn't walk with God closely or easily while in Haiti but I did think of this from Hebrews 11 often...

By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promises. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God...they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.


The promise will be fulfilled. The city is prepared. The tents will be no more.