Addison Noel

You. Are. Awesome. I am so in love with you.

You’re brothers were cute, but you take the cake. Honestly, going through newborn pictures of other kids on Facebook recently had kinda freaked me out with the renewed realization that all newborns are ugly. It’s an unfortunate reality. However fortunately, newborns make up for their ugliness with endearing tricks, such as crying all night long, stealing wives from their husbands, and pooping in their pants (and occasionally shirts, hair and even mouth), not to mention the uncanny ability to hold their urine for possibly days before letting fly all over my new shirt with a stream that could extinguish dante’s inferno. It’s these activities and behaviors which convince parents to continue caring for the screaming and defecating piles of protoplasm until they eventually become actual human beings.

I’ll pick up the story with vomiting. Not yours (which you’ve already done), but mine.

In the evangelical mission headquarters in N’Djamena, I started to get fevers the day before our flight left back to the US to have you. I took Coartem… and vomited it. I took Fansidar… and vomited it. I went to a four-hour Adventist Health International meeting, which I had to chair, and didn’t vomit. Then I went back to our room at the mission, took Malarone… and vomited it.

Your mother let me know her utter disappointment in me after she discovered my evil plan to time my illness to coincide with travel on an airplane. She also called in a nurse who happened to be on vacation in N’Djamena to come and start IV quinine on me in the middle of the night. The next day, I got my second dose of IV quinine about 20 minutes before arriving at the airport.

But we made it back. I preached two days after getting back (and made Mom very angry again when I stopped my quinine early so I’d be able to preach), then we took off for a great ten days in Massachusetts with your aunt, uncle and cousins. We were waiting every day for your arrival, staying close to Baystate Medical Center, where we wanted you to be delivered. With all the preterm contractions your mother had in Tchad (or at least that was her reason given for staying home and making me round on maternity), we were sure you’d be coming early.

After ten days of nothing doing in the Berkshires, we rented a condo in Palmer for another ten days, now closer to Baystate. We spent those ten days being graciously and generously fed by old friends in the area from work, church and other connections. It was wonderful. But we were getting really anxious for your arrival! We had both been getting baby-antsy (and more specifically, girl-antsy) for months now!

So we finally went for broke. We got a room at the Sheraton in downtown Springfield, right next to the hospital. And it was a NICE room. In fact, your mother was just commenting on how comfortable the bed was, our very first night in this comfortable bed, more comfortable than any bed we had ever lain in before, when she started having contractions. Roughly 1am.

I dropped your brothers off with some friends on the off chance things would progress. At 2:30am, your mother soiled the sheets of room 817 (bed on the right, should you be unlucky enough to find yourself there) with a gush of amniotic fluid. (And I would really recommend that you wear your shoes in that room, just to be on the safe side.)

So we went to the hospital and got into a bed at 3:40am. At 4am, you were born. It was weird. I’ve watched the birth of two of my children already. This started very detached. Just another kid. Just another delivery where your mother makes me sit silently in the corner of the room, not allowed to make eye contact with her. Not dissimilar to Saturday nights.

I first caught a glimpse of the top of your head and was impressed with how non-wrinkly it was. And your head wasn’t coned like a newborn. And then your face came out. Chubby cheeked and perfect. Most beautiful baby ever. At least the most beautiful baby since June 25, 2011.

20 inches, 7lb 15.5oz of pure goodness.

Then I did something very un-Olen-like. I went out shopping for you. I went and bought you stuff. Stuff you didn’t need, but I wanted to get you. It was awesome.

This evening, I realized that you were just lying by yourself in your crib. That wasn’t right. You’re way too cute for that. So I picked you up and carried you for as long as I could, until I had to take your brothers to the hotel. Your cheeks are so unbelievably soft and nuzzly. I don’t want them to change.

We had planned a trip to Hawaii. Carrying you around and looking at your face, I realized that I don’t care where we go on vacation this year. I won’t even notice. I’ll be looking at you.

Happy Birthday to Zane! 

Zane is 2 years old!

Two years ago, on June 25, we were driving from Washington, DC to Massachusetts to deliver. Stupid 6 hour drive I know. Well, we didn’t make it, and Zane decided to come at a random stop in New Jersey!

Turns out my labor was faster than most of my patients I know.

Well, he is turning into quite the intelligent young man. But along with his intelligence is his goofy self too. Which makes him all the more lovable!

His favorite word is “no!” His favorite non-family member is Mahamat our guard, who always picks him up to get mangos or guavas, or maybe even a leaf from the mango tree. Zane loves his cat, Thor, and picks him up even though he is almost half Zane’s size now. His favorite toy is a ball, in any form.

He has a precise way of communicating. He starts off the first part of his sentence in a normal voice volume, then finishes the sentence with a whisper. We’re hoping he stops this by the time he turns 18 and goes on dates.

“I want (in a normal voice) water (in a whisper).”

Not THAT much has changed since Zane’s birth. His favorite outfit is still his birthday suit! Of course who could blame him in the heat of Tchad!

Right now he is trying to jump rope with Daddy. In his birthday suit of course. Zane, not Daddy!

We are very thankful to have Zane a part of our lives! Thank you to all of those who continue to pray for our little missionary.

Potty Training

(Olen’s notes in bold italics)

First of all, we’d like to thank all but three of you for your encouraging words and prayers while Zane was crucially sick from his rapid onset of malaria.  It is very frightful to consider that in five hours, less than the length of one night’s sleep, he went from healthy to seizing.  And while on prophylaxis too.  We are very thankful that he has made a full recovery.  We certainly do not take his healing for granted or make light of how sick he was and could be again.  But he is now done with 2 days of IV quinine and 5 days of oral quinine.  And back to his normal self.  

Except for one thing.  

He is constantly saying pee-pee and ca-ca now.  And actually doing the pee-peeing and ca-caing deed in the proper holes, not in his pants (or on the rug, on the couch, in his high chair, on his plate, on the dog, etc)!  He has not had a wet or poopy diaper since his third day of treatment (except when he’s sleeping, but we don’t count that).  The connection in his brain has finally been made!  

So we’re going to write a book called, “How to potty train your almost 2 year old; a non-homeopathic method.”  Guaranteed best-seller.  New York Times, here we come.  

No, we don’t recommend Malaria.  We’d rather change ten more years of poopy diapers than watch our son seize again.  

But after Zane recovered, the continued IV fluids made him need to go pee-pee more often and with more passion and urgency than an excited Cocker Spaniel with a urinary tract infection watching his master come home after a prolonged absence.  And… with the extra practice of spraying out the crack between the toilet bowl and the toilet seat, thereby soaking whichever parent happened to be standing in front of him, he somehow got the hang of it to go to the toilet.  

And voila!  Now he’s going both pee-pee and ca-ca on (or occasionally beside, behind, in front of, over the top of, on the wall next to, in the general vicinity of, with the accuracy of a melted Chinese sprinkler) the toilet every time he needs to go.  

So, our recommendation:  Hook your kid up to IV fluids when you’re ready to chase after the little guy/gal and get up every five seconds to bring the human geyser child to the toilet whenever they ask.  

Either that or lots and lots of juice mixed up with a little Lasix.  Kidding.  

As a side note:  Olen also has malaria.  Just started the meds tonight.  FYI:  This has nothing to do with potty training. He’s already mostly trained.  

Not Mine

There is a certain shade of blue I know very well. All too well. It’s an icy blue. It’s cold. I’ve seen it many times in my career. The first time I saw it was fulfilling a pathology requirement in medical school. And I’ve seen it over and over in the Emergency Department. And it’s a color I hate.

It’s always associated with purple lips and cold skin, like you might see on somebody’s grandparents in the funeral home.

It’s the blue of death.

Zane, June 5, 2013, is a day I will never forget. You were that shade of blue. Your lips were purple. Your flesh had the feel of death. You did not breathe. I could not find your heartbeat.

We had decided to take a family getaway from Bere to the big city of Moundou, visiting James and Sarah Appel, and their children Miriam and Noah. Miriam’s twin, Adam, died a year and a half ago from malaria. I remember holding him as he died, turning that awful shade of blue.

Along with us were Mommy, Lyol, Gamma, Wendy and Cherise. Wendy and Gary lost their own little boy to malaria too.

You had woken up happy and eaten a good breakfast. You played and slept on the way to Moundou.

Then, about 11am, while shopping in a hardware store, you became even sleepier. And you started vomiting. And you vomited repeatedly. And you felt hot.

By 1pm, we had IV quinine pumping through your veins, that poisonous medicine that is so effective at curing malaria.

And still, you wouldn’t wake up.

For hours, I sat by your side and watched you, baffled how you got so sick, so fast. Your breathing was rapid, in the 80s; your heart rate was high, in the 180s. And you slept.

Was it sleeping, or being unconscious?

Just before 5pm, less than six hours after you gave us your very first sign of being sick, less than the time it takes to fly across the Atlantic, I noticed your little, tiny twitches. It didn’t look like malaria seizures. It jumped around. A twitch in this finger. A twitch in that leg. Almost like the twitches when you fall asleep.

And then the twitches started to progress.

James came home. Mommy came home.

And then you started vomiting some more.

We got a blood sugar. It was 298. You weren’t hypoglycemic. You were stressed.

We got a hemoglobin. It was 9. Low for a child, but not critical. You were anemic.

And then you seized.

You started crying inconsolably. I held you. I talked to you. I told you it would be ok. I told you I was sorry. I hoped and prayed you understood how much you were loved.

You stopped crying. Your eyes rolled up in the back of your head. Your entire body shook and jerked violently.

It may have been one minute, it may have been ten minutes. It felt like all 712 days since your birth passed before my eyes. The 712 days since I first held you, a swaddled, sleeping bundle with little dots on your nose. And it felt like your entire future, created long ago in my mind to usurp my own future, was being actively and cruelly cut down to mere moments.

You turned blue. That evil blue.

Your lips turned purple.

You stopped breathing.

I couldn’t find your heart rate.

And I broke. I begged you to come back.

Zane, your Daddy had no idea what to do. I had lost you. I, who pride myself on never getting worked up in a crisis. I froze, broken, shattered to pieces. It felt like my heart had been strewn around the world, a million pieces that would never be fit back together.

All that played through my head was James telling me the morning his son died, ‘Adam just seized, stopped breathing and died.’ And only yesterday would have been the eighth birthday of Caleb Roberts, had he not died from the same disease. June 10 will be the fourth anniversary of his death.

But I wasn’t ready to give up on you, Zane. I did the only thing I could think of.

I gave up on me. And I gave you up.

While you were blue, I gave you up. You are no longer my son. I relinquished any and all rights I have concerning you.

In that moment, I told God that you were His. I could not fix you. I had done everything perfectly, and you were dying, if not already dead. I could not protect my own son. And I could not handle losing a son to death. So I gave you to God.  I told God that if He was going to take care of His son, He’d better start doing something.

The next moment, your jaw started to unclench. You started to grind your teeth. Saliva started coming out of your mouth, frothing it’s way to freedom in a marginal sign of life.

And you finally breathed.

And the blue, that awful hard pale blue of death, started to fade from your face, slowly to be replaced by a softer pink. The purple in your lips gave way to a rosier sign of life.

You became a more beautiful version of yourself than you had ever been. More precious still. I stroked your long, light, perfectly-disheveled hair. I touched your nose. I reminisced about what your eyes would look like behind those lids. I found once again your lone freckle on your chest. I opened your mouth to stare at your crooked tooth. I rediscovered how magnificently created you are.

Figuring you had had a febrile seizure and wanting to prevent any further damage, we dumped ice water on you and gave you several Tylenol suppositories. We gave you normal saline to correct any possible hyponatremia.

By the time we finally got around to taking a temperature, you were still over 104 degrees, despite everything.

Very slowly, over the next several hours, your breathing got better and your fever abated. Finally, around 3am, roughly 16 hours since you had last spoken, you opened your eyes and asked cautiously for your Mommy.

Probably your last memory had been in a car during the morning. Now you were awakening in the middle of the night in a strange house with Mommy and me hovering over you, staring.

Mommy and I eagerly started grilling you on members of your family, body parts, anything that could help us know your brain still worked. You responded appropriately, and we prayed a prayer of praise that you had come through unscathed.

And you ate for the first time in almost 24 hours.

After that, you were so tired, you just fell asleep again. 

And we prayed that the next six days of treatment might go better than the first six hours.

Zane, malaria and seizures are common together. I see them all the time in pediatrics. And I’ve seen that only about half of those cases, those children leave the hospital breathing through non-purple lips. In the last four years, the Adventist missionary community in Tchad has lost Caleb, Adam, Minnie and numerous local Tchadians near and dear to us, all on account of malaria. This is why we treat malaria so aggressively. Zane, don’t be the next to succumb to this infuriating disease which would be rapidly eradicated, should it be endemic in America in 2013.

When you’re older, don’t ask me why I brought you here. Don’t ask me what I would do if I knew I was bringing my son into a place where he would be staring down 50/50 odds of survival. I won’t know how to answer that. Am I selfish?

There’s a certain community of missionaries that have lost family members while serving in the mission field. I do not want to join that community. And all those who have lost loved ones while in the mission field… they don’t want to have their numbers added to either.

I caught a glimpse of the pain a parent experiences losing a child. I thought I had lost you, Zane. But I can never lose you again.

You are no longer mine to lose, although I love you more than I ever have.

You have a better Daddy now.

Hawaii and Oprah

So, we'll be headed back to the states in late-July so Danae can pop out another baby (they seem to come out just that easy, pop, right Dear?) in early-August. Then we'll have vacation until late-October. We've accumulated maximum vacation time and we're blowing it all this year to celebrate the newest baby and get him/her as pudgy and vaccinated as possible before we return to Tchad.
We'll be a family of five and we were thinking that a hotel room might be a bit small for us for that extended period of time. So… we had the genius idea of a rental house! As it turns out, rental houses tend to run more than $20/day on the beach in Hawaii. Who knew?

Now, I've heard that Oprah has a pretty decent pad there, so I was just wondering if any of you knew her and could ask her permission. I'm pretty sure she'd be cool with a missionary family crashing her place, right? I usually leave the toilet seat down and everything.

Anybody guilt-ridden for not sufficiently supporting the missionaries to Africa, who has a beachfront Hawaiian mansion, we could assuage their guilt.

I wonder if we could turn this into a tax write-off for Oprah?

love
olen and danae

missionarydoctors.blogspot.com

danae.netteburg@gmail.com.

Olen phone: +235 62 16 04 93

Danae phone: +235 62 17 04 80

Olen et Danae Netteburg

Hopital Adventiste de Bere

52 Boite Postale

Kelo, Tchad

Afrique

Comfortable

A lot has happened in the last month since we’ve last written.  

For one thing, there are hardly any volunteers still here.  Everyone’s on vacation.  Melody and Jonathan left with threatened preterm labor.  Tammy and Jamie left in April.  My dad and mom left the end of April.  The 3 student missionaries left a couple weeks ago.  Athens just left last week.  

So we are down to the Roberts, Bronwyn, and us.  

With few people brings more responsibility.  For me that has come in the form of expanding my comfort zones in the operating room.  

Now, I don’t claim to be a general surgeon.  I don’t even like inguinal hernias or hydroceles.  I went into OB so that I wouldn’t have to deal with men.  (not really, actually I just liked it.)  

But the last week of April came, my dad left, and Samedi was on vacation still.  Samedi is one of our nurses that learned how to do surgery over the years.  He is quite capable  and has a lot of experience.  I put on my man pants and decided that I could handle it one week without him.  Just as long as the hernias held off a week….

Well, wouldn’t you know it but I had several inguinal hernias.  My first was actually a repeat hernia.  Ugghh, I thought.  If someone else failed doing it, why would I succeed?  But, I do believe it actually went quite well.  The next hernia was a HUGE one.  So I thought after my first 2 difficult ones, all of the rest would be easy.  

Then the next morning I had another one.  He had been strangulated the day before, but someone had reduced it.  I cut through the fascia, dissected out the cord with the hernia sac, and cut into the sac.  I thought I had better look at his intestines since he had been strangulated (the intestines were stuck in the hernia for a while).  I stuck my fingers through the small opening where the sac came from to reach for his intestines.  I pulled out some intestines, and they looked normal.  Then I pulled out some more.  

Who knew I could be so happy
about a dead intestine -
outside the body!

Uh-oh.  There was about a foot of small intestines that was quite clearly dead.  How do you know when an intestine dies?  Well, it turns purple and black.  The blood supply had been cut off for long enough that the tissue died.  

The rest of his intestines looked fine.  So….this was my UNcomfortable time!  I started to sweat a little more.  (had already been sweating.)  Was I nauseated?  Oh, wait...there’s no one else!  Not nauseated.  Not sick.  Not a general surgeon!

I’ve got to take out his dead bowel.  I say more silent prayers and try to remember exactly how I’m going to put his bowel back together.  I’ve done it a couple of times with my dad.  And with Samedi, but not for a long time.  We had actually just done a small bowel to colon reanastamosis a few weeks before with my dad, but I had gotten nauseated during it and had to scrub out.  I really don’t like poop in the abdomen…..and I can always blame it on the pregnancy.

I have someone call Olen to bring a general surgery book so I can review just in case I can’t remember what to do.  

As he’s coming, I decide that I’m going to do an end to end re-anastamosis after I cut out his dead bowel.  Olen reads me the gist of things from the surgery book.  It’s a little helpful in that it reassures me that we’re doing the right thing.  (oh, and ya….we don’t have those fancy staple guns here that they have in the states).

We only have 2 bowel clamps in the laparotomy kit so I clamp off dead bowel, clamp and tie it off from the mesentery, and then get it off of the field.  It was starting to stink.  If you leave dead bowel in someone for too long, they will get septic (body wide infection) and die.  

I start the tedious job of reconnecting the 2 parts of good bowel together.  I move the bowel clamps back a little so that I can get to the tissue edges.  Then I put the clamps side by side and start on the underneath-back side with 3-0 silk.  All interrupted suturing.  Next I put together the inside part of the bowel on the back side.  Now for the top.  I suture the rest of the inside of the bowel together that is towards me on top.  Then put the second layer over the top.  Wow!  Thanks God!  I almost freaked out, but You helped me stay calm and do the right thing.  

I remember Dr. Scott (general surgeon) saying that it’s the corners that leak if it’s going to leak.  I reinforce the corners and then check for leaking.  He had a nice patent (open) new small intestine that did not leak.  

Greatful to be done with the HARD part.  I shove (gently) his intestines back through his small hernial opening.  

Now on for the easy stuff…..the hernia.  I NEVER thought I would say that!  

Simeon and I then repaired his hernia and were happy to be done with him. 

In that same day came a ruptured appendix.  

God is teaching me to depend on Him and do my best.  

The next week Samedi came back and I was very grateful to have him help and do the hernias.  No more stressing over hernias!  

But that too was not to last, as Samedi needed to go to help in Moundou for 2 weeks while James is away.  So… I’m once again… stuck being the only surgeon here.  But it’s not as scary anymore.  Hernias and hydroceles are my friend now.  I think I’ve already experienced the worst of them now.  They are much faster than hysterectomies and less risky for bleeding too!

I guess I was getting to comfortable in the 100 degree heat!  It was time for a change.  

The Heat

This is what hot cooks
look like in Tchad. 

by Lyol

Mom and Dad keep running out of time to write these blogs, so I’ll just give you the lowdown on my little brother.  

The last thing they told you, well over a month ago, Zane was still having fevers.  Bla, bla, bla… same thing as last year… bla, bla bla… Zane’s sick and getting more medicine.  

More attention for little brother.  Less attention for me.  This was simply unacceptable.  There was even talk about Zane going back to America again WITHOUT me!

So… I pulled some strings with the other Nasaras, and we borrowed an air conditioner.  Yes, they do have such a thing in Tchad.  

Now I haven’t gone to medical school like my parents, but it seems simple enough to me if your kid is hot, you should make him cooler.  This may be easier said than done when it’s over 100 degrees in your bedroom at night.  And in the morning you wake up and it’s still 95 degrees.  I’ve only heard my parents throwing around these numbers… all I know is: It’s HOT!  

Mommy and Daddy had clearly failed after two weeks of overdose cipro and two weeks of maximum dose ceftriaxone and a failed course of overdose quinine and overdose fansidar, so now I got my chance to run the show.  

Daddy plugged in the air conditioner.  Zane’s room is the easiest room in the house to put it in because you can close the windows.  Plus there’s a little kitty door in one wall to stick the AC vent out and block off the rest with a towel.  

Two weeks.  Voila… no more fevers!  I’m a genius!  Plus, I get to sleep on the floor in Zane’s bedroom and enjoy it myself too.  Mom and dad said it got down to only 85 even with the AC, but still this seemed to help.  

What a "fried" electrical adaptor looks like.

Then … attack on us … Mommy woke up to a burning plastic smell and noticed smoke coming from the electrical adapter.  It was burnt to a crisp!  

They gave the AC a rest after that scare.  But then a few days later, Zane had fevers again!!!  I"m telling you, my diagnosis is the right one.

Mommy and Daddy eventually replaced the electrical adapter with another one.  Maybe the first one was faulty.  Cheap imported stuff.  Not real Tchadian quality.  Anyway, the fevers went away the first night Zane was back in the the cool air conditioning that took the bedroom temperature way down to 85.

Then it happened again.  The second adapter fried too!  And then another rest from scary burning electrical stuff.  And then Zane’s fevers came back again.  So we gave Zane a week of quinine.  Yucky stuff.  

The wild animals in Tchad keep us entertained.

Next, Gary re-wired a new electrical plug to the AC machine.  That way there was no need for an adapter.  But this too was too much for our house’s fragile electrical system, I guess.  

So I begged Gary to try one more thing.  He wired the AC directly to the house’s breaker system.  This has been working for a couple of weeks.  Mommy and Daddy say it’s cheaper to pay for the fuel for the generator to run the AC than to go back to the states early.

Zane’s fevers have seemed to be directly related to the amount of time he spends in heat.  So he gets AC to sleep at night and for his nap.  

Thank you for coming back, Miriam.

Now he can’t complain anymore.  I'm so tired of listening to my parents worry about Zane’s fevers.  Mom and Dad say it doesn’t make any medical sense to them, but… most kids in the states don’t have to be put to heat tests like we do here, so they still think we are normal.  

That’s good I guess.  

Gamma says that Daddy didn’t tolerate the heat well when he was a little boy, so Mommy says it’s his fault.  I guess we are supposed to live in Iceland, but Mommy doesn’t like the cold either.  Where’s a missionary hospital that’s about 80 degrees year-round?

What to expect when you're expecting...in Tchad

Tips for the Nasara…

Number 7 Tip: Leave out a baby name book as bait for snoopy SMs.  They think they might know the sex of our baby, but…..Mmmmha ha ha ha…..We’re not telling.  I know so mean to keep a surprise all to ourselves!

Number 6 Tip: Don’t try to get that perfect African pregnancy photo.  It may not have worked out so well like it did last time (see previous blog photo from probably May of 2011).  I did somehow get Zane’s pregnant belly with a variety of african animals: kingfisher birds, mating baboons (really truly), a snake (on my belly), a lion (in the background), a monkey, and the worst…...the charging cow.

Number 5 Tip: Eat what you want…..ice cream and pickles anyone?  That’s a negative on both.  It’s rice and beans or beans and rice every other day.  Now if only it were from Taco Bell I would be happy.  I so would love a Taco Bell bean burrito.  

Number 4 Tip: Don’t overheat.  

Hello?!  Did you say don’t overheat in April?  Um, kind of impossible.  The best bet is to operate on everyone you can find.  Then you can stay in the air-conditioned operating room.  I’m sweating as I write this blog… in our house… at 9pm.  It’s 104 in the house.  Ya, April is really hot.  I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t allow this for pregnant women in the US.  There would be some heat advisory warnings out for not only the elderly, but for everyone.  But you’re in Tchad, so go ahead and sweat in all those places you didn’t know you had glands.  

Number 3 Tip: Don’t get malaria. Don’t get malaria.  Don’t get malaria.  If you do, don’t get preterm labor, don’t get preterm labor, don’t get preterm labor.  

Number 2 Tip: Choosing your doctor.  You could go to the local health center where they are most likely to give you a class X pregnancy medication (bad for you) at one point or another during your prenatal visits.  Or you could just do your own prenatal care.  Weigh yourself from time to time.  Ultrasound yourself from time to time.  Take your blood pressure from time to time (actually, not yet done).  You know…..very programmed and scheduled.  

Number 1 Tip:   Choosing where to deliver, ie, deciding NOT to deliver in Tchad.  

Why not?  Angelina Jolie delivered in Africa, why not you?  Yes, she is cooler than me.  Second of all, all of Africa is not like Tchad, and Tchad is not like all of Africa.  There are nice parts and there are not so nice parts.  Tchad is one of those latter ones.  Bajillionth of all, Angelina travels with her own posse of personal OB/gyns and operating suites.

Start by deciding when to fly home.  Pay the expensive doctors in NDJ a lot so that they will sign a paper to let you fly.  Otherwise, suck your belly in and fake not being pregnant (not so easy to do).  

Pick a state to delivery in and fly there.  It would be smart to chose the state that gives you the fastest birth certificate, ie, not New Jersey.   That way you can get the kid its passport before you have to leave the country without your newborn.  

Pick a hospital that MIGHT believe your story of being an OB missionary doctor who did her own prenatal care and just arrived in the country.  Otherwise the nurses will brand you as a lying druggie who should have her child taken away. 

So in case you didn’t realize, we’re preggers again!  Due mid August.  

Gender Confusion?

So just to update everybody… There's a new member of the Netteburg family!!! People have been harassing us nonstop as to the sex.

So here it is…

It's a boy!!! (See photoGRAPHIC evidence. You just need to look really closely.)

He's already caught 2 mice!!!

love
olen and danae

To the church/family in Montana

To the church or family in Montana that has sent us baby clothes and huckleberry syrup……Thanks so much!  We never have syrup so this is a real treat!  We'll share with the Appels.  Sure, we will.  : ) 

love
olen and danae

missionarydoctors.blogspot.com

danae.netteburg@gmail.com.

Olen phone: +235 62 16 04 93
Danae phone: +235 62 17 04 80

Olen et Danae Netteburg
Hopital Adventiste de Bere
52 Boite Postale
Kelo, Tchad
Afrique

Volunteers Welcome!!!

Worker's Comp

Workers Compensation Interview Transcript, Bere, Tchad.  

Consultant: Please state your place of employment and job title.

Patient:  I work at the river fishing. 

Consultant:  How long have you worked there?

Patient:  Since I was five.

Consultant:  You started work at age five?

Patient:  I was hungry, wasn’t I?

Consultant:  Ok, fine. What is your salary?  

Patient:  The fish I catch provides food for my family.  If there is any leftover, I sell it.

Consultant:  What was your injury?

Patient:  Left thigh wound.

Consultant:  What happened?

Patient:  I was bit.

Consultant:  You were bit?

Patient:  I said I was bit, didn’t I?

Consultant:  By a fish?

Patient:  By a horse.

Consultant:  A horse in the river?

Patient:  A horse in the river.

Consultant:  A horse in the river bit you in your left thigh?

Patient:  A horse in the river bit me in my left thigh.

Consultant:  What kind of horse?

Patient:  A black horse.

Consultant:  A black horse?

Patient:  Am I not speaking English?  Yes, I said a black horse.

Consultant:  You’re not speaking English.  This is being translated.  What kind of black horse?

Patient:  You know, the black horses that go down into the river and become hippopotami.

Consultant:  A hippopotamus bit your left thigh?

Patient:  I suppose you could say that.

Consultant:  You suppose I could say that, or I could say that?  This is serious, official stuff.  On the record and what not.

Patient:  You could say that.

Consultant: Ok, tell me what happened.

Patient:  I was minding my own business, wading in pretty deep water.  I had only caught a couple of fish so far.  I threw my net out again.  All of a sudden I saw a huge beast come up out of the mirky water.  It’s mouth was WIDE open.  It made a deep grunting noise.  It was so fast that I could not get away soon enough.  It took a big chomp out of my leg, and by God’s grace I was able to get away.  It left a gigantic gash on both sides of my left thigh, through muscles and vessels clear down to the bone.  I lost a lot of blood.  I live in Tchoua, so it’s about 8 km away from Bere Hospital.  I got there with blood soaked clothes, but was soon repaired.  I’m so thankful that my leg was not broken.  The next day, I had a fever of 104.

Consultant:  So another typical hippo bite worker’s comp claim.  Can you tell me what protective equipment you were wearing?

Patient:  I had my shorts on.

Consultant:  Were you wearing your safety goggles?

Patient:  I was bit in the leg.

Consultant:  Please just answer the question.

Patient:  No.

Consultant:  I’m sorry to inform you that your lack of safety goggles is noncompliant with OSHA’s Hippo-Infested-River-Fishing Guidlines Regulation F.3.hh.10.6/3, as updated 06/2010, see version 8.4. Therefore, we will not be able to meet your request for worker’s compensation. Have a lovely day.

Patient:  Who will pay my hospital bills?  This is a very lengthy stay, requiring surgeries and IV antibiotics and lab tests and many other costs.

Consultant:  I’m afraid you and your family will be responsible for this bill.

Patient:  Where will I come up with the $40?