Merry Christmas!!

Today at the hospital we gave out presents to all the patients. We gave them a bed sheet, sardines, soap, and rice. The hospitalized kids each got a nice but used stuffed animal or doll. Now, maybe those wouldn’t necessarily be your ideas for gifts to bring smiles to faces, but boy did we see some big smiles and heard lots of thank you’s. It was a great way to spend part of the morning! We were especially thankful that there were only about 130 patients in the hospital as opposed to the 170 census from the beginning of the week. I think the docs and nurses worked out for anybody who possibly could go home to go. Lately the hospital census has been so high we’ve even had people on woven mats on the floor of the hallways, getting IVs or even blood transfusions. This is not due to any particular epidemic, but I think rather it is partly because people trust our hospital more. Many of our patients come from places quite a distance away, because they choose our hospital over their local possibilities.