Home Thoughts From Abroad

Happy Birthday, Steve.
In eternity we will celebrate all our birthdays together but in the meantime I rejoice in the life that we live together even when it means being apart. It is such an incredible privilege to be able to serve together at this point in our lives.

I know that you are committed to your students and always give them your very best and I know what an impact the you have on these fine young people. 

Looking forward to seeing you soon in Vancouver.  I love you.

On the weekend before Pam left for Canada we stole a couple of days away, rented a car and drove across the Malaysian peninsular to Cherating, a coastal resort on the south China Sea. It is the kind of resort that we have come to call deshi; that is to say, local and a little bit down at the heels (from Bangladeshi).

We don’t mind deshi resorts, and aren’t expecting Western comforts when we stay at such places. At at good one – and this one was reasonably good – you get a clean room with Malaysian only TV, all the noodles and rice you can eat for breakfast, and a decent beach with no chairs.

That doesn’t bother me as I just drag chairs from the poolside down to the beach. The locals freak, but there is nothing that they can do because a) Malaysians just accept whatever you do as the status quo the moment it happens, and even more importantly, b) I’m white. (You can complain all you like about the white man’s burden and the white man’s tax on the cost of goods and services, but I can walk into any hotel lobby just to use the washroom, and no one will ever confront me. At my age, that is a real bonus!)

The beach at Cherating was just flat out gorgeous. It was not Langkawi convenient; that is to say we were not offered all the amenities the moment we parked ourselves in the sand, but the water was clear and the beach was clean and the air was as fresh as a spring morning. We read and swam and chatted the day away, and in the morning did the same again. This is our kind of holiday!

I don’t know if we are mellowing as we age, but we got good and lost several times on the way home and never once argued about the route or how we had both messed up; we just kind of rolled with it, accepting that a lack of signage in this country was a small price to pay for a few more hours together on the metaphorical road we are travelling together. To our credit we didn’t make a single mistake coming into KL, a veritable Gordian’s knot of ramps.

Pam is back in Canada now, reading this web log, and hoping I get it right, so let me say that I am glad we just took a chance on this trip and got some time together. It turned out to be a nice little break, and a decent memory to add to the huge store we have accumulated during our time here. Sorry we didn’t get to see the bioluminescence, but that just means we will have to go again.

When you get to the age that Pam and I have reached, you are going to have parents that are not well. This is true for most of the friends that we have; parents who are old and infirm who need care, with tough decisions to make regarding that care. In this we are not alone.

The situation is somewhat more complicated in that we live on the other side of the world from our remaining parents. My Mom is in England, Pam’s Dad is in Canada, and both are more than 24 hours away by plane, even if you make all your connections. Pam made that trek over the last few days, taking some 28 hours to get from here to there. Fortunately her trip came close to the end of the school year, so the cost was borne by the company I work for as my contract calls for them so fly me and my wife home once a year.

Pam’s Dad has not been well for several years, but his health took a decided turn for the worse in February of this year when he suffered a heart attack and underwent emergency surgery to have a clot removed near his heart. That attack seems to have triggered a new and alarming deterioration in a pre-existing condition known as tic douloureux. He has been in decline ever since.

The attack came as Pam was in Thailand, presenting the results of her work in Cambodia over the last two years to a new group of doctors and community health workers in this part of the world. Their response to what she had been doing was enough to convince her that the time had come to put together a new partnership to deliver Christ-centred health care to the myriad of villages that dot the Cambodian countryside.

She returned to Malaysia to face a tough decision: whether to go back to Canada immediately to care for her father, or remain in Malaysia to put a conference together that would capture this momentum of support for Cambodia’s needy people. Anyone who knows Pam knows that this decision was agonizing.

For a while it looked as if her Dad’s situation had stabilized, so after much prayer she decided to go ahead with the planning for the conference, an endeavour that required the coordination of specialists from Singapore, Papua New Guinea and Phnom Penh, all of whom had prior commitments. This had meant that Pam had to make numerous trips to Singapore and Cambodia and many conference calls on Skype. Meanwhile her Dad’s condition continued to deteriorate.

Finally last week the conference went ahead as scheduled, and the Lord brought all the elements together, and others that Pam had not been aware of, resulting in a new initiative that promises to be a huge blessing to the people of Cambodia. The work is clearly not done, but a map has been plotted for the road ahead, and commitments made that if kept will see a Christian witness throughout Cambodia.

With this major hurdle behind her, Pam was now free to fly home to be at the side of her Dad as he faces surgery in less than two weeks. My prayers go with my faithful wife, who with her every breath seeks to do what is pleasing in God’s sight, though it may cost her. I know that her presence will be a blessing to her Dad, and a comfort to her family who have borne the burden of caring for Dad for many months.

Pam left for Canada early yesterday morning, starting the long trek that is our annual pilgrimage to see family and friends at the end of the school year. I will remain in Kuala Lumpur for another five weeks, which means that some of these posts, like this one, will originate from Malaysia, and those that Pam writes will originate from Canada.

Regular readers of this web log will know that Pam’s Dad has not been well. He suffers – and that is the proper word in his case – from a condition known as tic douloureux, a severe, stabbing pain to one side of the face. It stems from a branch of the nerve that supplies sensation to the face, the trigeminal nerve. The pain usually lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes. It may be so intense that you wince involuntarily, hence the term tic. There is usually no pain or numbness between attacks and no dysfunction of the muscles of the face.

Most people feel the pain in their jaw, cheek, or lip on one side of the face only. Pain is usually triggered by a light touch of the face or mouth on the same side as the pain. The pain is so severe that people can become afraid to talk, eat, or move during periods of attacks. It is considered one of the most painful conditions to affect people.

The cause of tic douloureux is unknown. There are a number of theories as to why the trigeminal nerve is affected. The most commonly accepted theory is compression of the trigeminal nerve, usually by a blood vessel, causing it to become irritated. This irritation causes the outer covering of the nerve, the myelin sheath, to erode over time. The irritated nerve then becomes more excitable and erratically fires pain impulses. Tumours and bony abnormalities of the skull may also press on and irritate the trigeminal nerve. Trauma, infections, and multiple sclerosis can also cause damage to this nerve.

People with trigeminal neuralgia become plagued by intermittent severe pain that interferes with common daily activities such as eating and sleep. They live in fear of unpredictable painful attacks, which leads to sleep deprivation and undereating. The condition can lead to irritability, severe anticipatory anxiety and depression, and life-threatening malnutrition. Suicidal depression is not uncommon.

Her Dad has been taking Tegertol, an anticonvulsant that keeps the pain impulses from firing. It also causes her Dad such shortness of breath that he feels like he is suffocating. As the myelin sheath surrounding the nerve continues to erode, the Tegertol has become less and less effective, requiring the use of morphine to control the pain. For the last three weeks her Dad has been hospitalized in an effort to stabilize his medication and the pain.

There is a new surgery that promises relief in about 85% of cases. The operating procedure requires part of the skull cap to be lifted back and the nerve exposed and cauterized. It is a six hour operation and not without risk for someone who is 86 years old. But medication is no longer an option, and surgery has been scheduled for May 27. Pam has gone home to assist her family in the preparation for her Dad’s surgery. She would appreciate your prayers.