Ouch!! Rachel has a bad bike accident while Mom is in Tonga

I heard bad news last week--Rachel was in a bike accident, waking up to a concerned crowd of people, a fire engine, and an ambulance. After several hours of evaluation at Primary Children's Medical Center, she was determined to be okay besides some awful looking scrapes. Alison sent me pictures of those--they look pretty painful. I heard about all of it later, and they tell me Rachel is doing okay.
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Meanwhile, as compared to healthcare here in Tonga: The Vava'u group of islands are to the north of Tongatapu. They are very beautiful, and much like Roatan, Honduras. We have been working with the nurses and the ministry of Health here. It is really fun. The nurse has a big role here--he or she cares for the person and their family from before they are born until after they are dead. The nurse delivers the baby, and the nurse prepares and dresses the body for the funeral. The nurses here know everyone. The immunization rate is good, almost 100 percent--if the mother does not come to the clinic, they go to her house and find she and her baby. They do very well with very little resources. For example, Rachel's bike injury. I am so glad she is okay, and that scrapes on her side are the worst of her injury. However, she had a CT scan of her head (and perhaps other parts of her body, I am not sure), and x-rays, and I am sure a very expensive ER visit A boy was run over on Friday here on Vava'u. He probably has a basal skull fracture, because he had blood and spinal fluid leaking out his ear. But they don't have a CT scanner here, so they just looked at clinical symptoms to determine what was wrong with him. His hemeglobin was low, so they knew he had internal bleeding. There is no blood bank here, so his relatives came and donated blood, and he got a couple of units. He was conscious, and doing better when we saw him on Monday morning, and he will probably be just fine, even without all of the fancy diagnostic tests we routinely use in the USA.

The people here are warm and friendly. The bishop invited us over to dinner and family home evening last night, and his wife brought pancakes for everyone this morning. Another family fed us a Tongan dinner after church on Sunday. The nurses are cooking us Tongan food tomorrow, and we are having a "day off" to go on a boat to one of the islands. People are so kind, although they are also generally pretty poor. For example, the families bring the sheets for the beds to the hospital, and the blankets for the baby, otherwise, they would not have any. They also bring food for their families. They are generous with what they have, even if it is just a little.

Here is a picture of our health screening in the market last Saturday. They had Tongan dancers right in front of our screening tables. We screened 90 people!