Sunday, February 27, 2011

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Try this out!

Scroll to the bottom of your Facebook page where it says in little blue letters, "English (UK)" or "US", or whatever you selected. Click on it. When the language box pops up, click on the arrow next to "English (US) and select "English (Pirate)."

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Kindness

Here's a recent recording of a song that was written by our former pastor and sung by Steve Bell, a Canadian contemporary singer.

http://stevebell.com/wp-content/jld_ecards_files/02-Kindness.mp3

It's a beautiful song.

You can also check out the whole album of Bell's, here:

http://stevebell.com/kindness/about/

Love,
juliana

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Sick Bay

It has been Sick Season at our home these last weeks.

First affected was Namrata. She developed cholera. We still do not know how or where she managed to pick this bug up, but with her uncanny ability to zero in on anything 'interesting' and put it straight in the mouth, this was a disaster waiting to happen.


We watched as her intake of fluids became progressively inadequate to compensate for the amount of fluid she was losing, and she became dehydrated, dull and drowsy. We knew that if she was not able to drink enough fluid, we would perhaps have to admit her for IV fluids, but we also knew the trauma associated with repeated pokes to get an IV access in a small, dehydrated child, and the further difficulty in trying to keep this line going. Invariably, she would have been kept restrained and yet, an IV line would have had to be restarted in a few hours....all in all, an unhappy option.

And so, we decided to rehydrate her by passing a fine naso-gastric tube directly into her stomach (you can hardly see the tube in the picture!) through which we fed her about 30 ml of Oral rehydrating solution (ORS) every half an hour through the night, while she slept.

I'm happy to tell you that by morning she was well hydrated, passing enough urine, and generally more cheerful. By evening, her diarrhoea had settled, and she has now completely recovered.

(Important disclaimer: Arpita and I can afford to do this sort of thing, and take these 'apparent' risks because
1. We are doctors and know how the system works, what to look for, and signs of danger developing
2. We are surrounded by other doctors, and have other safeguards in place to ensure we are not doing something abjectly stupid. Vinod (my cousin, a paediatrician) dropped in from time to time to see her, and we also spoke on the phone with Dr Puliyel in Delhi
3. The hospital is always only 2 minutes away.
Even so, I will confess that I was very scared, and a lot of prayer went up that night for this little helpless baby girl.
Please do not try doing something like this unsupervised!)

Next down was Anand. His peculiar sickness was a single episode of fever (about 101F) that lasted about an hour, before coming down and lingering for some more time. However, during this fever (about 3am to 4am) he was wide awake, happy, exuberant, bursting with creativity, and, wait for it, talking in rhyme! We were amused and yet wondered whether this was some vague manifestation of delirium, or something else! By the next day he was perfectly well.

And then it has been my turn. Since Monday I have been having high fever and severe body aches. From Wednesday onwards, I have been on sick leave, and I feel totally drained and run down. From Thursday, I began vomiting. Yesterday, briefly, my temperatures reached normal, but were up again by night. Today, finally, I have started feeling better. All in all, it looks like a severe viral infection, though I am being treated for typhoid.

But let me say, it has been such a privilege to stay at home, and be entertained by the three cutest people you could imagine! I wish I could record the various things that keep going on all through the day.

Please do pray for Arpita. With all the stress she is under, she cannot afford to fall sick. And continue to pray for the rest of us as well.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

an interesting discussion on Summer/Winter Christians:

This helps me as I seek to try and apply 1 Philippians 2:1 - ...

http://preachermike.com/2011/01/11/summer-christians-winter-christians-and-the-narrative-of-injury

I can identify with both types but also not totally with either. So, this article was also helpful for me.

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2007/04/summer-and-winter-christians.html

I would consider myself a Winter/Autumn. How about you?