The Great Jones Adventure: Oxygen flowmeters have arrived!!!

our beautiful oxygen flowmeters!

I’ve (Aaron) been wanting to post this blog for a long time but haven’t made the time to sit down to write it for the last month. But alas, this Sunday afternoon I’ve found a few minutes of peace, where I’m not tired (already had a nap!).

The last 5 months I’ve been rounding in the Pediatrics ward. A problem that we have all over the hospital is lack of oxygen. Yes, we are around 7,500 feet above sea level ( I call it the mile and half high village) and the air is thinner up here as every visitor is reminded of as they walk around up here. But we have no oxygen concentrators that will increase the amount of oxygen in the air from 21% to 100% for people with lung disease, pneumonia, or other medical issues that require more oxygen.

Sometime this past year a big concentrator was attached to the peds ward and piped to 6 “outlets” next to the beds. It seems like pneumonia as well as gastroenteritis/dehydration are our most common illnesses here and one day I came in for rounds and found 8 kids ages 2 months to 10 years being treated for pneumonia. As I rounded I kept seeing oxygen saturations of 86%, 88% even 82% (normal is at least 90% but for kids 94%) but those kids weren’t on oxygen because they appeared stable to the staff. The real issue was that they didn’t have enough oxygen flowmeters to get the oxygen to the patients that needed it. The hospital instead had to go 2 hours on rough roads 1 or 2 times per week to pick up expensive and large 5 ft oxygen canisters for some of the patients. I’m sure you could google or look on youtube to see some of dangers of having those “metal missiles” around. And some of the kids were getting oxygen via a small concentrator that the ward had borrowed from the other wards (making me think “what sick adults had to give up their oxygen concentrators to let these kids have oxygen”). Not only that but all the kids were sharing the oxygen coming out of the machines by using a splitter and having 2 sets of tubing going to 2 different patients. The problem with that is that you really don’t know how much oxygen they are getting and if you are ready to take one child off the oxygen you need to do it gradually but if the other child is not ready to be weaned from oxygen then you just wait…a day or maybe 3 or 4.

I thought it was crazy that the ward had a very expensive machine (large oxygen concentrator), had paid around $10,000 to have that machine installed and piped to 6 beds. But we were only using it at 1/3 of its capacity because we didn’t have 4 more flowmeters that would only cost about $800 total.

So after rounds I went up to purchasing and asked them to price 5 oxygen flowmeters for the peds ward so we could access the oxygen for the babies/children who needed it. He said he would get back to me.

Not only did I want to share this story to say thank you for all those who have given toward the ministry here but also to show what goes into a typical “project” here. This is not meant to be derogatory toward anyone here. I only share it as an example of how different things are here and how difficult getting something so vital and “simple” can be. Believe me there are 1,000 other places on this continent that make Kapsowar look like a breeze, but this isn’t their blog!

I was called by the nursing officer a few days later and told the flowmeters were purchased a couple of days ago and should arrive on Sunday (in 3 days). He told me the price, which was about what we anticipated, and asked if I could get the payment to the hospital to pay for them. So I went to the bank and withdrew the amount from our account later that day and gave it to finance the next day.

Monday I went for rounds and…no flowmeters on the wall. “I’m sure they are in still in the nursing officer’s office” I said to myself. Later that day he told me he had the flowmeters and would have them checked and installed that day. The next day…no flowmeters. I looked for the nursing officer but couldn’t find him all day. So a couple of days later I found him and he said they had ordered the wrong flowmeters. The new OR building had different outlets and these flowmeters were ordered to fit them, not the ones in pediatrics. So they returned these and began looking for the correct ones. A week went by, no word. Another week…another 5-6 kids with pneumonia seen in peds ward…no flowmeters. A week later or so I asked again and they said they are working on it and we should have some within the next few days. Not to drag this on but I want you to see how painful this was!

Anyway, 6 weeks later they tell me there are some available at Tenwek Hospital (a large Christian hospital about a 6 hour drive away). The other good news was that we had another nursing officer whose family lived near Tenwek and he was going to visit them next week. I spoke with him and he was confident he could get them during his visit. By this point it was May and I had originally paid the money mid-March. He returned from his visit with his family the next week but still no flowmeters. He said he spoke to his contact there but when he went to meet him the other man didn’t show up and didn’t answer his phone. So he came back to Kapsowar without them. The good news was that he was going back next week and felt confident he could get them then. He was delayed in going by a week so the NEXT next week he returned. He stayed this time for a week and I was eager to hear from him about his success story. He came to my house the next day and said he was able to get the flowmeters BUT they needed an attachment for a humidifier bottle and he took them to Nairobi and left them there to have them added.

Only one was ready when he had to leave so instead of splitting up the order he just left them all there. Then he said (and I quote) “You may want to see about getting some flowmeters from somewhere else. Maybe you have a friend in America that could send them over.” WHAT? After all this he is telling me that we might need to start over! I told him I thought we should stick with these flowmeters in Nairobi and he said that would be fine. About 10 days later he told me someone had sent the flowmeters from Nairobi to Eldoret and tomorrow someone would be bringing them to Kapsowar. That next afternoon I asked if they had arrived and he said the driver left late and didn’t realize how bad the road from Eldoret to Kapsowar was and made it half way but turned around because he wasn’t sure he could make it here before dark. The next day was Sunday and I saw the nursing officer at church and he told me the driver should be here that afternoon.

The next morning I was walking into work and passed him carrying a box. I’m sure my eyes lit up! He said they had arrived and was sending them to the “procurement” department to assess them and they should be available tomorrow. Lo and behold 2 days later we had 4 (not 5 but who’s counting by this point!) oxygen flowmeters. I told the nurses we should celebrate by turning them all on high and breathing in fresh oxygen for a few minutes but we decided to just drink some tea and thank God for them instead!!!!

So thank you to all our supporters. We could not have purchased them without you. We hope to have another ministry update blog posted later this week!