On our first visit to the Mbingo 1 Baptist Church near the hospital they had asked us to fill out a visitor registration so that we could be welcomed by the congregation at the end of the service. It was a little more detailed than one might usually see visiting a church in the U.S., but what was most interesting was the boxes they give you to check for your age. Anybody over age 51 is lumped into the same category. I would assume that most churches in the U.S. would have at least another age bracket on the right side of the scale.Another example is that I noticed on two occasions the history and physical written by the resident started out with the phrase "an elderly gentleman presents with . . . " This, of course, does not seem that unusual to me, especially working in internal medicine in the United States. What was more striking was that each of these patients were in their early 50s! When I get home maybe I will start referring to my parents as "elderly."
There are a few patients that we would actually consider to be geriatric. The interesting thing about them is that they don't actually know when they were born so the birthdate needs to be estimated. The most common way to do this is to either ask them if there were any major historical events that happened in their childhood. The other way is to see if the birth date of their oldest child is known.
On a more personal note, Christie has left to go back to Minnesota. At the moment she should be in an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. The Palmers are also away to visit Banso Baptist Hospital on the other side of Bamenda this week so things are pretty quiet around here. I enjoyed being here much more when Christie was with me, but at least this gives me an incentive to eventually come home.
Thank you to all of you who are interested enough to read our blog, and those whom are praying for us and this hospital.
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