We slowly, but resolutely, enter the health post where silence unexpectedly occupies the space around us. Reassuringly, the silence is broken by the healthy cry of her newborn child whose high-pitched plea for milk quickly directs our attention to his mother. She lies unconscious on the bed, oxygen flowing through her nose and magnesium flowing through her veins to suppress the body’s return to violent convulsions. The blood and fluid on the bed and floor around her are enough to frighten anyone who has not previously attended a delivery. We proceed to carefully remove the placenta which provokes a reassuring pain response from the mother. And as she begins to wake up and react to her surroundings we are hopeful she will continue to improve. We are grateful mother and child have survived eclampsia, a disease of pregnancy that accounts for almost one quarter of maternal deaths in Peru. We agree to bring her and her child back to Santa Clotilde for close observation.
Just as everything seems to be calming down I hear a group of men run into the health post followed by the word, “emergencia.” A young woman lies unconscious on the bright orange backboard, foaming at the mouth, her skin pale and cool to touch. We learn she has been ill with fever for several days. It is unclear when she began to lose consciousness, now unable to walk or communicate her needs. Her husband, a community health worker from a nearby pueblo, only recently arrived to find her in such a delicate state. All of a sudden our history gathering is cut short by her diminishing oxygen saturation and a sudden loss of her pulse. Immediately we start chest compressions. Seconds later a dose of epinephrine flows through her body, each external compression an attempt to awake her dormant heart. A quick look at her husband’s downcast, yet acceptant, face tells me he already knows how it will end. Shortly after beginning CPR each push into her chest results in an exodus of massive amounts of old blood from her mouth and nose. An image of her six-month old child appears in my mind as we continue desperately to revive her using the only tools and methods available to our powerless hands and minds. I turn to God, pleading Him to do what I cannot. As they wrap and prepare her body for burial we pray for her soul and for her family who will now live only with the memory of their loved one.
We slowly work our way back to Santa Clotilde. The current of hopelessness is strong. A whirlpool of doubt and sadness erases any clarity that remains in the water’s dark, murky depths. Dead, fallen trees along the path intend to lead the weary vessel astray, or even worse, cause it to capsize and succumb to nature’s physics, sinking to the dark and suffocating river floor. Amidst the mental and emotional chaos, however, my eyes catch a glimpse of the once-fearful mother holding the warm and moving hand of her daughter who almost lost her life. Next to her sits the accompanying nurse who, suffering from the loss of a recent miscarriage, joyfully embraces the recovering mother’s newborn child.
And as we pull up to the dock in Santa Clotilde after what seems to be a perfect storm, the driver secures the boat to a steady, durable wooden post. The vessel, now anchored, allows us to freely disembark and move onward. I am reminded of the gift of the anchor of Hope which keeps us grounded when the troubled waters around us seek to pull us under.
“The image of the anchor…helps us to recognize the stability and security that is ours amid the troubled waters of this life, provided we entrust ourselves to the Lord Jesus. The storms that buffet us will never prevail, for we are firmly anchored in…this hope, which transcends life’s fleeting pleasures and the achievement of our immediate goals, makes us rise above our trials and difficulties, and inspires us to keep pressing forward, never losing sight of the grandeur of the heavenly goal to which we have been called.”