A 5 minute experience stretched over 3 weeks!

For the sake of a brother-in-law and anyone else who doesn’t like medical pictures I promise than there are none. And neither will there be any detailed descriptions of the pathology! I have just come across a picture in association with an album of hymns to which I was listening’, and here it is.

The picture reminded me of two things. Firstly of all the anti-Trump news about his attitude to abortion. He may have been lying (an art perfected by politicians) but I heard him say (unless it was doctored by media experts) that he was against the generalization of Roe v Wade but that he felt that the people in each state should be able to vote on it. He claimed that he personally believed that there were 3 legitimate reasons for abortion – rape, incest and if the mother’s physical life was in danger. A very different view from what his opposition presents him as holding!

But what has that to do with the title of my article? Nothing! But the picture reminded me of the hundreds of cases of ruptured uteri that I have operated upon in countryside Ethiopia where in the late 1960s our small hospital was the only hospital for millions of people and we were so busy that we could not operate things like antenatal clinics – to which people wouldn’t have come because of custom, distance, lack of roads and means of travel. We served with 1-2 doctors, 5 trained nurses and a good group of Ethiopian helpers (a few of them trained elsewhere as dressers) as the only hospital area for more than a million people!

So I have seen many babies who have died before they were born. The picture above is one suggestion as to where they end up. But this is not a theological discussion.

One day, when I was the only doctor in the hospital I was faced with three ladies with ruptured uteri arriving within 5 minutes of one another. Our ‘operating suite’ had 2 operating rooms, one of them large enough to have 2 operating tables. So I had 3 tables for the 3 women. I had a nurse who was capable of watching an anaesthetic (she was v good) after I had induced the patient. We called for help from the ward and so ended up with the sickest, having been resuscitated, asleep and me operating on her. Behind a sheet for visual protection a second lady was being resuscitated as was the third lady in the smaller OR.

It was a long morning but all were eventually taken into the ward on appropriate IV, pain and antibiotic therapy. All three babies were dead (and hence the picture above). Two ladies progressed very well and were able to go home in 7-10 days. No matter what we did the third lady did not do well. She ran a high fever and using all our available antibiotics, changing to new ones as appropriate and doing an X-ray to make sure that we hadn’t accidentally left a pack or an instrument inside we eventually had to conclude that we would probably see her depart in a box.

Sadly, I believe that much of what is called ‘faith’ healing is sham. But I do believe in God and I think that He can do wonderful things. While I was operating on that same evening on which we had come to the above conclusion, the nurses and a few of the families of workers on our mission station spent the night in prayer specifically for the healing of this lady. In spite of all our failed treatment, the lady’s temperature the next day was down considerably, she felt much better and was discharged ‘well’ about 5 days later!

Dominic Cartier

Around the table!

It seems like centuries ago but I can still remember the seven of us sitting around the table and chatting, discussing, arguing – whatever took our fancy. The boys were all into soccer, I played cricket and even one year I coached the U15 soccer team when our oldest boy was in the team. My son persuaded me to do so as they didn’t have a coach. They had lost the first two matches and as he said were ‘unorganized’. Several kids didn’t like my disciplined approach and left, but we didn’t lose a match and won the grand final 8-1. One of the boys ended up in the Australian team! But I’ve become sidetracked so back to the main story. At our table we talked about many medical things which might have made some visitors squirmish. I had returned from Ethiopia because of health, and could not return at that time because of the Communist take over. However, we had lived in the hospital grounds. There was a large leprosarium so the kids grew up seeing the deformities caused by that disease. Our first son was a bad sleeper so that with my wife’s third and fourth pregnancies he would come into the theatre, if I was operating in the evening (pretty often) so that mum and number two and eventually number three child could get a decent sleep. Aged four he learnt how to squeeze the anaesthetic bag if patients were paralysed. I had to give my own anaesthetics and a worker would manage the anaesthetic when the patient was asleep. They enjoyed teaching the little white kid how to do certain tasks. The kids used to do Sunday rounds with me in the hospital after church. So they knew the sights and screams and smells of medicine!

I remember one day, when my wife was away looking after a sick parent, the kids asking me at the breakfast table what I was operating on that day. They knew the ending ‘ectomy’ but when I said an ‘oesophagectomy’ one of the younger boys asked ‘what is an oesophagus?’ It’s what joins your mouth to your stomach’, I replied. ‘So how does the food get down then?’ was the next question. ‘I pull the stomach up and sew it to the end of the throat’ I replied. It is a bit more difficult than that and takes a few hours but I didn’t go into detail. Number four’s answer has always tickled my fancy. ‘Now there is a man who can truly say “I’m full up to here!”‘ indicating his Adam’s apple area (at 5 his Adam’s apple wasn’t developed – but you know what I mean.

Dominic Cartier

Can a non-scholar be a Christian?

I was, and greatly enjoyed being, a surgeon! Shortly after obtaining my higher degree in surgery I joined a Christian Mission to go to Ethiopia as a missionary surgeon in one of their hospitals. I was expected to and very willingly underwent an assessment of my beliefs as a Christian. Obviously and logically the mission had standards and desired a certain degree of theological unity among its members. Having satisfied them that I was okay and could be accepted as a member I went to Ethiopia, where I worked up to 80 hours a week as the only surgeon covering a population of more than a million, but I also had a vital relationship with the ‘spiritual’ side of mission life. Later on after the communist takeover was overturned I was in government hospitals on their Academic staff.

In one area that I worked in the early 2000’s the population was very largely Muslim. But there was a University with a student body of about 40,000. This student body was made up from candidates accepted from all over the country. A significant percentage of these students were ‘Protestant’ Christians. The Protestant Kale Hiwot church was small in the University town but was the central organizational base for the churches which were scattered over that region of the country which made up one of 13 regions in the whole country. The church eldership was basically made up of mature Christians who had some but not a great theological nor secular education. They were great people but the younger University students were much greater in number. An average attendance at the church which the University students attended would have been nearly a thousand. That was great but the young people kept referring to and using Paul’s phrase ‘we are not under law but under grace’ (Romans 6 v 14) to underpin the thought that, as they were no longer under law, they could act as they wanted and God would turn a blind eye. This sounds, and was, wrong. The kids were basically good kids but some of their actions were not acceptable by the elders! Well the problem was magnified because the majority of the University students, whether they were Protestant or Orthodox or Islamic, in the freedom of their situation and of modern thinking seemed to live on the same basis. The student population came from all over the country and lived in University housing without parental advice or control!

There were 500 recorded terminations among students by an American subsidised clinic in the last 6 months that I was there. There were a number of other places willing to perform abortions whose activity I have not included. Drugs were a problem. I remember an instance where I had to operate late at night on a senior member of our University staff who, when drinking and ‘drugging’ with a younger member of his own unit, was severely stabbed in his abdomen which caused a critical situation. Neither of them were members of the Protestant church to which I referred earlier but both claimed to be Orthodox Christians. So the problem of lack of morals was society wide!

The morals of our Western countries aren’t any better! It is not a theological issue in most people’s eyes. There is a broad sense of personal rights to freedom and consequently a loss of moral standards.

So how does that take me back to the Pauline teaching that ‘we are not under law but under grace’? In the context of his whole book of Romans, where he writes this phrase, Paul has said in the early part that all mankind is guilty under the law as sinners alienated to God. BUT the Grace of God in Jesus and the Easter Event gives us the opportunity to be forgiven! And that in a sense is the core of the Christian message, now God has given us the opportunity to be forgiven by His Grace and not be judged by our law breaking. There is, however, more to the law than the law relating to Justice.

In the Jewish religion the law had different aspects – sacrificial, dietary, health and moral for example. When we think about it, we also think of the law in different ways. Jesus said that He had not come to destroy the law. Most certainly he didn’t come to destroy the moral law. We have a good summary of God’s moral requirements in the ten commandments! (Exodus ch 20). Christianity is not legalism in that we have to obey certain rules to earn our way in God’s acceptance, but it is certainly a call to a high understanding of what God has laid down as moral. I find that so releasing. Most see the commandments as negative and they do have a prohibitive aspect but equally they are there to be a guide and encouragement to a wonderfully rich and peaceful life.

To follow on….from Kids beware!

From the PAST – How many presumably intelligent politicians couldn’t see that the vote on same sex marriages was not primarily about the right for people to be married (they already lived together and had many legal protections!). One would have expected ‘Shepherds’ to look deeply and thoroughly! There is a good reason in law why people are requested to ‘tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’ The government certainly did not apply this standard to themselves in informing the public about why they wanted the same-sex marriage passed. Rather, on a broader scale of ‘perverted ideas’, there were powerful elements in both government, educational facilities and percentage wise smaller groups in society who passionately wanted to make it possible to bring into the educational system and society an acceptance at all levels of the ‘normalcy’ of homosexuality. There were and are many who consider this as legally allowing the tainting of normal healthy minds at an age when they are most impressionable and unable to discern truth from pressure! And this is planned to begin even from infancy? How long did it take between the law passing and pushes to change educational standards in primary schools. Anecdotal reports claim that the route in had already been planned! Most certainly they had begun pre-plebiscite to teach it in Universities!

From the PRESENT – In what war has the attacking army been supposed to feed and protect the enemy who have committed filthy actions to bring war upon themselves? What is called the ‘Fourth Geneva Convention’ has many excellent provisions to protect civilian normal life when their country is being attacked; – noting particularly medical, educational and daily living (shopping etc) facilities. Very clearly this Convention puts onto the shoulders of the attacked people to not use these facilities to cover and/or protect war time actions! So although it sounds good in theory, actually the ‘so called Government of Gaza’ negates all these reasons as they place warheads under the cover of every such institution which the IDF has entered! Many proofs have been clearly shown to the whole world – the majority of whom prefer to believe the proven Gazan (Hamas) lie.

From HISTORY – The now anglicized word ‘Palestine’ has a history. It was a region of Egypt where its people were Egyptians. It was a Roman term introduced after the 70 AD massacre of many Jews as a substitute name for Israel, Judea and Samaria – the population were almost 100% Jews; and an area of the Ottoman (Muslim) Empire called by the British and verified by the World Nations at the end of WWII as the Palestine Protectorate as a home for the Jews! Politically (and remember the Law is often an ass!) they said that it was to be separately governed as a homeland for the Jews and the Arabs, both of which groups lived there! They were not officially called Palestinians. Since then the Arab portion of the population have refused to see the 2 state division unless it included annihilation of all Jews. (intifada)

UNIMAGINABLE – How many honest nations leaders can vote for a country which has a terrorist government to become a member of the UN? The honest answer is none! In the recent UN vote the applicant Palestine had refused on several occasions to accept a land for themselves. Offers have been made several times by Israel before and refused unless, accepting that land, meant the eradication and genocide of its enemy, Israel? Australia showed its lack of honesty and integrity by voting ‘YES’. Shame upon all our heads. Of course you could deny the label ‘terrorist’, but I can’t imagine much more terrorizing things than they have done!

Dominic Cartier

Kids – Beware! ‘They’ are a mob of liars!

***But don’t be fooled by lies to aim at false skies!***

I guess that ‘they’ doesn’t include ‘we’ or ‘you’, but in a sense it does include all of us because it is a very rare, unique super-honourable person who does not sometimes colour or limit the truth to fit their version of the truth. I intend to let that sit in the background of my discussion and I am assuming a good share of understanding and honesty as I proceed! Most people are liars, and most of us convince ourselves that our degree of lying is tolerable and justifiable – often not so our assessment of others!

I am coloured, although most people see me as white. At least where the sun shines on my skin in the winter I am a light shade of brown; in the summer I am ‘browner’ to very brown. As you can see looking into my eyes – taken mid-winter, not photoshopped!

Nevertheless I am seen as a white supremacist! I’m not sure over what I am seen as ‘supreme’. Maybe I’m being a bit facetious, it seems to me that as I am not First Nation (although both my parents were Australian citizens) I am not classified as coloured (although as I have explained, I am! I don’t think of myself as a Scandinavian or ‘peaches and cream’ Pommy – a ghostly white person). I am not a female or one of the deviant groups. I am neither green, woke, NAZI or extreme right or left wing politically (although I do see some truth in some of their thinking. I’m not sure about any good in ‘woke’) – and thus I am not worth being considered as anything but a mere waste of space! Except as a taxable item!

I refer back to my opening paragraph. Politically there is a rare bird called an ‘honest politician’. Sadly because of party politics a truly honest politician rarely gets a chance to be heard. They are forced to follow the party line, a line which is drawn very close to a desire of winning the next election.

The Bible talks about shepherds (I presume leaders) and sheep (I presume the masses). Using religious terms transferred to politics, I presume that the various levels of government are in a significant way the ‘shepherds’. Looking at recently changed laws I ask – “How many, presumably intelligent politicians, can’t tell the difference between a male and a female?” I will follow on my thought pattern in my next ‘heatedstew’ edition.

Dominic Cartier.