On Saturday after having spend 22 days in the hospital, having 3 operations and 9 blood transfusions, Mrs. Phillippe was finally cleared to come home. Randy flew the 90 minute flight down to the ABWE missionary hospital to get her and family. It was the same route that Randy had taken two weeks earlier. The drive would have taken nearly 6 hours and the first flight was extremely time sensitive.
She arrived down south a week after Thanksgiving. By that point, she had a hysterectomy, 2 surgeries and the 9 transfusions. But for some reason she wasn't getting better and was starting to drift in and out of commas. So, the decision was finally made, against the doctors wishes up here in Kara, that she should be moved as soon as possible down south to the Baptist missionary hospital which is staffed by American doctors—some donate time others are full time medical missionaries.
When she first arrived they started doing tests and discovered that her major problem was with her creatinine levels. I've been told this is a major way of telling the functionality of the kidneys. A normals persons is around 1.2 but hers was as high as 15.8. I asked more about this and was told that her kidneys were functioning only in the 16% range. Mrs. Alderman an RN from the US and a long time missionary here told me that in the US someone would typically be put on dialysis when their kidney functions dropped below 35-30%. However, here we don't seem to have the machinery to be able to offer dialysis. So, the doctors could only give her medicines and that is when so many believers started praying asking God to touch her body and heal her.
The first week down at the ABWE hospital, we didn't see much improvement. We were up in Kara and they were down in their nestled in the mountains and phone reception was hard to come by. But it seemed she was starting to talk, drink and attempt to feed her baby. However, her numbers were still very high. They actually climbed from 13+ into the 15's. But then this past week an absolute miracle started to take place! On Tuesday we heard the news that her creatinine levels had dropped from 15+ to 7+. Then again on Thursday we had heard that it was dropping even lower and by Friday we received the good news that she would be able to finally return home.
Saturday, Adie and I went up to Sarakawa where there is a dirt runway that Randy uses has is main take off. We were accompanied by the Huffs and about 8 other nationals who were all just excited to see Mrs. Phillippe as we were! About 12:45 pm, we caught the first glimpse of the plane and about three minutes later it was on the ground and taxiing toward the hangar. When the plane came to a stop and the engine was cut, we all rushed up to meet and welcome her. She looked weak and tired but was in very good spirits. She was accompanied by her husband and her little three week old son, who is healthy! The Huff's brought up their three girls ranging from 13-5. It was the first time they had seen their mom in over three weeks and I don't believe they every full understood how grave the situation truly was.
We were able to take Mrs. Phillippe and her family back to their house and visit with them a bit before we left them so she could get some rest. God has truly been so good to her and her family. She has so many relatives who don't believe and we pray that this will be an tangible sign to them that our God is real and that he is still working miracles to this day.
