Making Housecalls; A Long Trip To Tuberon

A Blessed Good Day to everyone!

Thank you all for your continued support of our medical mission here in Pilar Camotes, Cebu - Philippines, and our blog! We are truly so very blessed by our Lord for His provision of resources of every type so that we may remain here and continue to provide medical care to the poorest of the poor, those who, despite being hard workers, live day by day, often not having enough food to eat, clothing to wear or adequate shelter!

We have been extremely busy these last two weeks with a significant increase in our patient volume, as well as with travel to Ormoc City on the island of Leyte for access to more advanced medical care and resources and travel to Baybay, Leyte, for a very productive meeting with the dean of the agriculture department and a professor of agronomy. This was to advance our efforts to provide additional corn seed for the local farmers as the recent year long severe drought severely depleted their seed corn supply! We made a good deal of progress in forging a cooperative partnership in obtaining the much needed seed corn stocks, but also in developing the possibility of  creating a small business that will allow the employment of people here on Pilar as well as enhancing the production of agricultural products and improving the nutrition of the children of Pilar! We ask if you would please pray that our efforts, strengthened by God's grace will bear much fruit!

Though we have seen many patients since the last blog post, we felt that the focus of this post should be centered around one young patient in particular; a 3 year old girl who lived up in the mountains! We learned of her injuries about 1 week after they occurred. She slipped and fell into a large kettle of hot water heating over an open fire!

We had been contemplating expanding our access to medical care by making some house calls and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to make our first house call! I will start by showing you some photos of our journey just to reach this young patient.

Here we are leaving from the main town (Pilar) on the island of Pilar. We had just filled up the gas tank and we are ready to set off on our journey to Tuberon,  a small collection of homes along the side of the tallest mountain on our island, Bandera.

This is a view of the side road to the village of San Isidro as we turn off from the main road and head into the mountains.

This is a view from further up the side road going to San Isidro village, the point from which we start our hike up the mountain!

To give you some idea of the poverty and the living conditions of most of the people on Pilar, this is a small house along side the road to San Isidro!

This is a side street as we are just beginning to enter the village of San Isidro. This shows some more of the typical housing in the village!

This is looking down the main street of the village of San Isidro. Basically the main street makes a loop around the village. 

This is where we parked the motorcycle and began or trek up into the mountains. From here to Tuberon is about a mile and a half to two miles.  

This is where the down hill ends as we cross the first stream via the little foot bridge. From here it is mostly up hill! 






  

 

Here our guide, also a patient of ours, and my wife, Rhome, we are climbing up a slight up hill grade toward our first rest stop.

Here is our 1st rest stop! We were able to sit in the shade for a little while and visit with some of the people who live along the road as we journey further up the mountainside!

 Here our guide continues to lead us along the trail and through some welcome shade trees. Just a little further up the trail we are about to discover a wonderful surprise!

Here is our wonderful surprise, a very young calf, just calmly nestled beside the path, right in the middle the jungle, what a sight! 

As we continue on toward our destination I was able to take this picture of where we are headed. 

This is another house along the trail. It is very similar to the other houses we have passed; bamboo and palm fronds, no electricity, no plumbing, no running water!

Here we are at last! This is the home of our 3 year old patient and her parents. Again you can appreciate the humble living conditions of so very many of the people on our island!

Here is a closeup of the face of our precious little 3 year old female patient, who, 1 week prior, slipped and fell in to a large kettle of hot water that was being heated over an open fire.

Since it had been 1 week since the burns had occurred, we feared the worst! Fortunately, someone was able to obtain a bottle of antibiotics which had been started. But the grandmother mixed up an old herbal remedy and applied it to the areas that had been burned.

What you are about to see is graphic and somewhat disturbing so please be forewarned!

Here is what we found when we examined the young child!

Remember, this is 1 week post injury with scalding hot water over an open fire. The only care that had been provided was 1 bottle of oral antibiotics and the herbal remedy that was prepared by the young child's elderly grandmother.

Considering the severity of the original injury and the complete lack of medical care, soap, running water,etc. I would call this nothing short of miraculous!

This is a closeup of the primary areas of involvement! Other than one mosquito that was stuck in the herbal remedy that the grandmother had made up and applied, everything else looked remarkably clean and noninflected!

Here my wife, Rhome is preparing to get the child to lay down so that she can clean the areas and apply some Silvadine cream to the burns!

Here she is applying the Silvadine cream to the burns, you can see by the expression on the child's face, that she has little if any pain! 

While we were there the mother of the child ask if we could treat she her and her husband (sorry we have no photos of him as he was very shy and did not want to be photographed).

Our young patient is happy and running around the porch in the foreground!

The mother had complaints on intermittent palpitations and episodes of feeling faint. This had been going on for some time and was not worsening. The respiratory and cardiac exams, limited as they were, were benign. Due to an intermittent systolic click (Faint) and no other findings, it was proposed that she may have symptoms secondary to mitral valve prolapse. We started here on a trial of low dose metoprolol and will make the journey back up Bandera mountain in about a week!

Her husband, though a young man, had symptoms consistent with musculoskeletal low back pain with some sciatic components. Interestingly, he related surviving being struck by lightening as a child. We started him on a NSAID with GI precautions and will also see him in followup in about a week.

Here are some tools of my trade, medicine and a bible! The good Lord, after all, is the great healer/physician!

Well, that brings to a close, the tale of a traveling medical missionary/physician associate on a small, remote, subsistence living island here in the Philippines!

We will close with our heartfelt prayers that God will continue to strengthen us, provide the necessary resources to accomplish His work here on Pilar, and lead us in His love and grace and mercy as He has done so abundantly these last three years!

Until next time, we look forward to your prayers support, encouragement and comments!

We ask that you continue to encourage your family, friends and coworkers to visit our blog and hope that they will do likewise! We have had visitors from not only the US, and Asia, but the Maldive Islands, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, Switzerland, the Ukraine, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, the UK, and India!

MAY GOD BLESS US, EVERY ONE!!!!

Chip & Rhome Nuttall

pilarchip1@mac.com