Entering Nepal was like a breath of fresh mountain air. Well.. perhaps not initially.
We crossed the border into Nepal at night. It was a DUSTY, dirty 2km trek, full of semi-truck exhaust. We carried our bags from our drop off location to the Indian immigration office and then over to the Nepalese immigration office, THEN to a hotel. We were tired and dirty when we finally got to a bed.
One of our ministry days in Kathmandu was spent at Iris Ministry’s banquet house. Two days a week they offer meals to the homeless population and also have a small health clinic (cue my excitement!) where they are able to offer a bit of first aid/wound care to the people who come for a meal.
The resources in this clinic are sparse. They had run out of some very basic first aid supplies and are forced to be extra reserved giving out simple supplies like band-aids. Such is the case with many small clinics abroad—always hurting for the supplies they need to help the people in front of them.
The day my team served at Iris, a man came in with an abscess on his wrist. It was dirty, oozing, swollen, and obviously infected. The wound had an opening about the size of a quarter. He was one of the very few people we would deem “bad enough” to receive the precious first-aid resources we had to give.
He came in and sat down in the dimly-lit clinic room. Kristine (my fellow nurse and teammate) used her phone light to examine the man’s wrist as we assessed and decided what to do.
Step 1: Clean it up.
One of the women who works with Iris long-term (Let’s call her Katie) was filling in for their usual nurse who was out of town at the time. Katie was eager to learn more about how to care for wounds like this having had no formal healthcare training of her own. Kristine and I decided how we should clean it and walked Kaitie through the steps of cleansing the wound and the entire area around it to prepare for cleaning it out.
Step 2: Squeeze.
Painful—but necessary. I squeezed as much of the infection out as I could. Katie was eager to help with this part as we bonded over our sick fascination with this sort of thing. (I know its gross but love it a lot)
Step 3: Debridement.
In order to allow the wound to heal successfully the dead tissue has to be removed. It’s a home for bacteria and it will prevent the good tissue from knitting itself back together. Even more aggressive than step 2. I used a scalpel to carefully cut away the dead tissue in the middle of this man’s wound. I wiped away the blood with gauze and looked at his face to see if he was still doing ok.. He was fine despite everything and trusted our care of him entirely.
Step 4: More cleaning.
All we had was iodine, so that was what we used. I talked Katie through the proper technique of how to clean it out while reducing the number of bacteria that would be introduced to open skin.
Step 5: Pack it.
Miraculously, they had iodoformized gauze amidst the small table of supplies in the clinic and I talked Katie through cutting a strip of the gauze and packing in the wound. This will absorb the blood and fluid that would collect in the wound and keep it clean, and help it heal from the inside out.
Step 6: Wrap it.
Wrap it as best you can and pray it lasts until he comes back to have it re-dressed. Use a whole roll of gauze and put tape all over it. This dressing is what will be the different between healing and an even deeper infection.
Step 7: Teach.
Thankfully we had a translator to communicate what this man should do to protect his wrist. We tried to emphasize the importance of keeping the dressing dry and KEEPING IT ON. I like to add a bit about what might happen if you don’t follow instructions… some sort of threat of an even worse infection and a hospital visit.
Step 8: Pray.
We huddled around our Nepalese patient, like every patient and person who comes to Iris Ministry, to pray for this man’s wrist to heal and for Him to recognize our Messiah as the only giver of everlasting life. We prayed for Yahweh to heal his heart, also. For while bodies are naturally designed by our Creator to mend a hole in our skin, we are not naturally inclined to heal our hearts from the pain and wounded-ness we are born into and continue to develop over a lifetime.
I’m forced to reflect on the work of Yahweh on our hearts because it is incredibly similar to how I treated this man’s abscess. We come to our Creator with our heart gaping—Full of the toxic mess of emotional pain, depression, anxiety, fear, bitterness, resentment, trauma, stress and so much else.
We look at ourselves in disbelief of what has happened. “How did it get this far? How did I end up like this?” We ought to look to our creator, Elohim, and trust him to do the work for us, so that we can heal properly and continue living—function as He has designed us.
The road to wholehearted healthy living is painful and slower than we’d like but it is a good one! We have to trust that giving up our difunctional behaviors and unhealthy perspectives will create space for new growth—like cutting the dead tissue out of a wound. As I also reflect on how the Lord has been healing me, I am astounded by how much I have grown through continually surrendering to the role of ‘patient’ and asking Yahweh to do the work He desires to do. Now, my only duty is to function as He designed—to be obedient to His word, to Love him with all my capacity, as well as share my excitement and gratitude for what he has done.
My experience in Nepal is teaching me how satisfying experiences are when we are yielding to the healing process of our creator and humbly accepting the duty we have been designed to implement.
Psalm 41:4 “I said, Jehovah, be merciful to me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against you.”
Ecclesiastes 12:13 “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” KJV
