Father’s Day Reflections

Father’s Day Reflections

I am truly blessed to have 4 wonderful children that are loving and independent and educated. They all have wonderful spouses that are educated.All the children and their spouses have at least a college degree.  All are involved with the church and mission and/or school work. Yes I am bragging but I am proud of our 3 daughters and one son. Our oldest, Janelle, with her husband have been involved with many Maranatha church or school building trips to various countries. She is a physical therapist and he is a pastor and in charge of part of the retirement center in Oklahoma. He is very good with finances. Their oldest is going as a student missionary from Southern Adventist University to Thialand this coming year. Our son is an electronics engineer and a physical therapist and his wife is a neonatal intensive care nurse and they have been involved with their local church and school in Texas. Our third child is an emergency room nurse and now trauma coordinator in NW Ark. Her husband is an accountant. She has been on mission trips and they are involved with their church and school in Arkansas. Our youngest is an OB-Gyn physician and her husband is an ER Physician and both graduated from Loma Linda University. We are here in Chad with them.  As I watch them work and work with them I naturally think they are some of the best doctors that there are. Olen is a great administrator as well as a physician. Danae is so compassionate and tries to help many different people by paying for some of their meds and some of their surgeries etc. All of our children have done better with finances than we have. As I think about our great family it is because of a wonderful wife that raised these children as I don’t think I have been the best father at times but the good Lord is forgiving and helps to make up the difference at times. Of course we have the most intelligent and good looking grandchildren of anyone.   

As I look at families here in Chad, many with multiple wives and often most of their 8 or 10 children have died. Being pregnant in Chad is dangerous as there is very little OB care in most of the country. Danae especially is trying to make a difference. One has to deal with “local healers” which are actually witch doctors. There are some “cultural”  things such as not feeding babies anything but water for 3 days after they are born. Apparently there are some poorly trained and/or lazy doctors in some of the other hospitals. A recent patient came here with very infected open abdominal wound post C-section. Some necrotic  tissue including fascia had to be debrided. A few days ago we thought it might be clean enough to try to pull it together somewhat with retention sutures. As we examined her, it was found that the uterus was not closed and one could put your finger down into the vagina from the abdominal wound. A few sutures to close the uterus were done and large retention sutures placed in the abdomen. So far she is looking good. Go to Danae’s blog at  www.missionarydoctors.blogspot.com for more OB descriptions and miracles. We had another from the same place that had dehiscence with her intestines coming out of her abdominal incision after a C-section that was not done as it should have been. 

This past week we had a patient with necrotic areas of sigmoid colon and necrotic cecum that required excision of both segments and reanastamosis.  I don’t know the cause but it appeared ischemic but why would two separate areas be that way with no evidence of internal hernia or volvulus or intussusseption but possible typhoid. The appendix which we took out with the cecum appeared normal. The patient is doing well post op. We had another case of perforation of ileum secondary to typhoid patch rupture. We excised the area and repaired it and he is doing well so far post op.

I have been told that I may have done more surgeries than anyone else in this country so far this year. This may or may not be true but I have done close to 350 or 400 procedures with about 500 being done in the hospital so far but Danae and Greg Sanders (here for 2 weeks) have done several also.  

We have a new well drilled now. When Garwin McNeilus was here, he saw the proximity of our present well to the toilets etc. and said that he would send the money for a new well and that it should be done soon. It has been pumped and disinfectant put in it Friday but it will take a few days to get it into the system. It is interesting that the water coming up out of the well by pump is about 90 or 95 F and not cool like the well water back home. The drilling system used water to drill with and their drill stem that is turned by hand back and forth with about 4 or 5 men. It would be a good muscle building exercise. It works as long as there is no solid rock. There are various layers of clay and sand. The good water layer is a coarse sand down about 60 meters.    

Everyone seems to be in fair health right now. Zane has occasionally a temp to 100.1. Not sure what that means but he acts pretty normal otherwise.  He is almost walking now. He stands alone. Dolores keeps busy taking care of Zane and Lyol during the days. No, we still have not learned French very good yet. It does not soak into our old heads very fast.  

Today has been a great Father’s Day. Zane began taking several steps today so that all could see. He continues to feel good. We had a C-section at 0500 today for twins transverse lie primip and preeclamptic. One twin was dead but the other is good. Danae gave me a card that says “I used to think this would be a cool dream to work with you in a mission hospital and now it’s a crazy realty. We are blessed.” I had the same dream so I am blessed. I got nice emails from the other children also. We got a very hard rain and thunder storm with lots of lightning this evening.  

Our address is: Hopital Adventiste de Bere, 52 Boite Postale, Kelo, Tchad,  Afrique.     

Our emails are: drbland@sbcglobal.net and dfbland@gmail.com 

Love, Rollin and Dolores Bland

New Year Jan 2012

This past year has been quite eventful for us. We are moving not just another mission trip but for the next five years to Bere Adventist Hospital in Chad, Africa. We will be joining with our daughter Danae and her husband Olen Netteburg. She is an Ob-Gyn doctor and he is an ER doctor but of course there you do whatever needs to be done. They had been begging us to come help. Then in August I was let go from working for Craig General Hospital at the Grand Lake Medical Park clinic so we decided to do what we wanted to do anyway but had been dragging our feet. We had visited Bere for three weeks in Jan-Feb 2011 so we know what it is like there. Bere Hospital is a 70 bed hospital that is very primitive but in great need but has lots of interesting pathology. There is no public power. The only electricity is from the hospital generator which does not run all the time but they do have good clean well water.  Our new address will be:  Bere Adventist Hospital, Boite Postal 52, Kelo, Chad, Afrique Our email is: drbland@sbcglobal.net and dfbland01@gmail.com    I don’t know what our telephone number will be yet. There is no main hospital telephone but there are cell phones. Our email comes via cell phone there. If you want to call you should use the services of “pingo.com” Their web site will tell about their services which costs only about 20 cents per minute vs a few dollars per minute via AT&T or whatever. There is a 7 hrs time difference, ie. 1:00 pm would be 8:00 p.m. there. Go to “missionarydoctors.blogspot.com” to learn more about what is happening there and some of the many needs there. Olen is a very gifted writer. We spent 3 weeks in Mongolia on a “Share Him” preaching mission trip Sept 2011. We already had it scheduled and paid for before all this other began to be happening. Dolores and I were both preaching at different sites and we didn’t see each other during that time because we were about 15 hrs from each other. There was already snow when we arrived in mid Sept. The people were very hospitable.  Most of the church growth in Mongolia is among the young people. Older people are still somewhat suspicious of westerners after being under Communism for 70 years. We did have some baptisms at each site.  At my site it had warmed up to the mid 40’s on the last Sabbath so they said it was warm and had the baptism in the river which seemed pretty cool to me. I had a good translator who knew English and Korean as well as Mongolian. Dolores had a translator that did not know English very well so had to study her notes for a few hours each day. She had to follow the script pretty closely whereas I could deviate a bit and be all right.  Mongolia is 11 time zones from here and across the date line. We left here on a Sun. and got there Tues but coming back we left there Mon. noon and got into Tulsa Mon. night.    We would not recommend Air China as it had poor service, but the vegetarian meals were good.  We had accumulated some vacation time as we had taken minimal vacation past 2 years but we still lost some of what had been promised before we parted ways with the employer.  (No I did not have any problems with the State Board)  I began working with an Urgent Care (now in our old office) and it is easier and pays pretty well.  If we were not going to Africa I would probably work there more.  The Indian Health Service at Jay said they needed help but they were very slow with all their paper work and delays due to a Chief election so I didn’t work any for them. Our latest grandson (Zane) was born June 25.  She (Danae) managed somehow to get on the plane near term pregnant and come back to the States to deliver.   She then took her Ob-Gyn boards on June 27 (two days later!)  and passed.   December has been a hectic month as we are trying to get ready to go. There have been several “farewell” or “retirement” get togethers for us. The Deleware County Commissioners made a proclamation declaring Dec 12 as “Rollin Bland M.D. day”.  The Grove City Council also did the same. The Christan Medical Clinic and the Grove Baptist Church had an evening for us and gave us some donations and a short wave radio. I was the president and founder (with Cathi Spencer, my office manager for 30 years) of the Christian Medical Clinic since when it began in 2001.  The Clinic was for those who could not afford medical care and had no insurance.  The Grove Hospital also gave me a plaque for “40 years of service”.  This was during their employee Christmas program but they also had a special meeting to say good bye to the employees that might want to.  Most of the “oldies” are already gone. That same evening the Grand Lake Camera club had its program. (I also began the Grand Lake Camera Club about 20 yrs ago)  Actually I had not quite been on staff there at the hospital for 40 yrs but it was close.  Gail Hill and Cathi Spencer had a musical tribute farewell at the Jay Seventh-day Adventist Church Dec 18 which was very nice.  They had Dolores and I sitting on a chair on the stage during the whole program. They had a “money” Christmas tree for donations for the place we are going to. The hard part is that we know we will never see some of these people again in this life but we pray that we can have a reunion around the tree of life.    God has been good to us.  We have had baptisms each year that I have been the lay pastor of our church here in Jay. We are healthy. We have had our physicals and many immunizations in preparation for our work in Chad. We sold our cows and rented our pasture to the ones (Lyman and Jay Williams)  that bought our cows. Our new pastor who is taking over our church here in Jay is Elder Jerry Mayes and his wife Kay. I have known Jerry since grade school and Kay since 1968. They both lost their spouses and then married each other about 5 yrs ago. They make a sweet couple and are really evangelistic for God which is what we are all here for according to Matt 28:19, 20. We are also told to go to the ends of the earth and Mongolia and Chad both fit that description somewhat.  We need to learn French really fast as French is the official language there although Arabic, Ngere, and others would be helpful. I would like to learn it well enough to be able to preach in French.     Tentatively we are to leave about Jan 10 or 12 to be in Nairobi, Kenya for a “Misssion Institute” for 3 weeks (Jan 16 to Feb 4) then go directly to Chad about Feb 5.   I think we will have a 40’ container in which to put our things and some hospital things and hopefully our Toyota Forerunner. We have to take furniture and things for our house there that is not even built yet. Some of the shipping people are on vacation all week from Christmas to New years. May God be with each of you this coming year and may we meet around God’s throne if we don’t meet again here. Love Rollin and Dolores

4 June I love green

Here in Chad it is getting green since the rains have begun.  A lot of crops have been planted and some are beginning to grow.  One can see young rice, millet, beans, watermelon and other things as one walks around some of the “fields” that have been worked up mostly with a plow pulled by a team of oxen. Occasionally one can find a tractor but they don’t seem to know how to drive it with a plow or disc very well. A month ago everything was brown now is is green. Some of the trees and bushes have put out new leaves also. We perhaps got two inches rain today.    

Oh yes I love green backs, especially Ben Franklin just like anyone else. 

I like lots of color such as in some of the flowers that are beginning to bloom and the birds that have come in since the rains have begun and there is more for them to eat.  Some of the sunbirds and warblers  are very pretty and have such sweet songs.  Although the colors on the rollers esp the Lilac-breasted roller and the Abysinnian roller are very beautiful.  God is the best artist there is with all the color that he arranges including the sunsets and the beautiful clouds.

I like the color pink especially on eyelids instead of very pale from severe anemia such as Hemoglobin of 2 or 3.  Chronic anemia is very common. Much is caused by chronic malaria and various parasites as well as some from chronic malnutrition.  

We had another day last week with two appendeceal abcesses. The leg amputations are all doing well with sutures out and using their crutches to “walk” around. The boy with no skin on much of his lower leg and had a contracture of knee so he could not walk now has had a split thickness skin graft that has mostly taken and we straightened out his leg during the anesthesia. He now is walking although that leg is very weak yet. They boy with a crushed hand that had the thumb and index finger missing and much skin missing now has had a skin graft but we haven’t unwrapped it yet to see how it is doing.  We got a lady in two days ago that had a C section somewhere else several days ago and they didn’t close it properly. She came here with severe severe infection and the wound is open. I debrided some necrotic tissue and now one can see the uterus that fortunately is keeping high and helping to hold the intestines inside.  It probably will have to heal in by secondary intent. We saw another lady today with vesico-vaginal fistula but we can not help her because it is caused by a large cancer in the apex of the vagina.  She had had a previous hysterectomy somewhere else about 2 yrs ago. We had a lady recently that could hardly swallow liquids and not solids. We opened her abdomen and stomach and put in a G tube so she could be fed.  We don’t have CT, upper GI, or gastroscope but ran rubber dilator up her esophagus from the stomach and it hit an obstruction in the upper chest and some blood came down so we think she has cancer in her upper esophagus.  Maybe the G tube will help her for awhile.  We saw a man  a few days ago with a large non tender mass in his mid abdomen. We aspirated some clear yellow fluid from it. It is not connected to bladder. We had a catheter in the bladder. Don’t know what it is yet and he has not come back in for surgery yet. 

Olen, Danae, and I have been looking at various plans for possible new buildings in the near future for Bere Hopital.  How many ways can you make a new OR and maternity with the limitation that it has to be in a building not more than 21 feet wide but can be whatever length in multiples of 3 feet.  We are hoping this will be built before a year from now. The colors are optional as long as it is earth brown which is the best because it won’t show the harmattan dust so bad that comes in dry season esp Jan. We hope to have a Nursing school started within a year. The lady to direct it is here now to begin putting together plans and curriculum for it and fit it into whatever regulations there might be. Her husband hopes to get a radio station started.  

Zane seems to be doing better now hopefully. He finished the course of ceftriaxone. He is afebrile today and hopefully will stay that way. He is standing alone and tries a take a step so it won’t be long that he will be walking I am sure.    

Our blogspot is:  www.weareamissionarybland.blogspot.com   I made a “oops” when I sent out a note telling of it. I accidentally put “k” instead of “I” and some of you caught it.  

Our email is:  drbland@sbcglobal.net  and  dfbland@gmail.com