March 1, 2015

Dolores was having chest pain Jan 24 and 25, but no more until Jan 30 Friday morning when she awoke with it a sharp dull pain in the left chest so she even agreed that it needed checked out; and she is past 70. We flew in the mission plane Fri afternoon to NDjamena and got a flight on Air Morocco early Sat morning to New York and then US Airways to NW Arkansas where our daughter Danita works in the ER at Washington Regional Hospital arriving there by midnight Sat night and was admitted to the hospital early Sun morning. (Thanks to Olen for spending lots of time with a travel agent etc working out the details) She had the full workup with blood work, CT's, EKG's, nuclear med; cardiac stress test and found no evidence of ischemia and had an ejection fraction of 73 which is very good. She does have an elevated WBC with 80% lymphs so had a flow cytometry which was not fully diagnostic, then had a bone marrow but found nothing that requires any treatment so was given all clear to go back to Chad. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia sounds bad but usually requires no treatment for years, maybe decades. We had told the various doctors etc that we had a return ticket to Chad on Feb 18 so they did the work up as rapidly as they could. There was a lot of ice and snow but fortunately the hematologist did not close her office and we were able to get to her office on Feb 15 through the ice to get the reports that everything was ok. We have another appointment June 24 for a check up when we go home on our "annual leave". We don't know yet if this trip is "medical leave" or part of our "annual leave" as it seems there is not a clear policy on that for IDE's (interdivisional denominational employees). 

This trip certainly was not what we would call a vacation although we did tour Casablanca for a few hours during a layover on the way back to Chad. Air Morocco only flies 2 days per week to NDJ so we were fortunate but they don't seem to partner with anyone so we had to pay domestic baggage fees in the USA for our baggage especially on the way back. We barely made the connection in JFK as we had to claim our baggage then recheck it in each way. It involved getting our baggage and going to another terminal but an angel (an operations officer of Air Morocco) was also going to this other terminal and helped us to get to check in with only 3 min before closing the check in and we were the last onto the plane as they even helped us get through security to the head of the line. Otherwise we would have to layover either in New York or in Casablanca for 5 days for the next flight to NDJ.

We are safely back in Chad and back to work doing lots of surgeries etc. We had a lady that we took out a 17.4kg (38 lb) ovarian cyst last week. 

Boko Haram so far is quite a distance from us and has been repelled by the Chadian army thus far. Ebola seems to have quieted down. It is very dusty and warm here with high of 100F and low of 70F.

Our emails are drbland@sbcglobal.net and dfbland01@gmail.com
We covet your prayers
Rollin and Dolores Bland
Hopital Adventiste de Bere
Boite Postal 52
Kelo, Tandjile, Chad, Afrique
Blog www.weareamissionarybland.blogspot.com