I wish it was all sunshine and rainbows, but we’ve had a rough start.

The people here have been kind and thoughtful. I’m thrilled about my job. The kids love their new school. Jen’s joined the international women’s club and is doing a fantastic job at helping us all settle in while she explores the town, toddler in tow.

But it’s been illness, after illness, after illness.

Ironic for the medical provider and his family. It’s really got us down!

This region of the world – central Asia – is the one of the worst for the prevalence of gastroenteritis, aka tummy bugs, aka stomach flues, aka lots of other names that aren’t appropriate for polite company.

We’ve had early and intense infections. The kids got it worst. They were oh-so-sick for a solid 5 days. It was heartbreaking.

I’m not just the dad around here, I’m the medical provider. And I have more tools here for working up GI bugs than I’ve ever had at any clinic: I can get PCR testing for a wide array of GI bugs in a matter of hours, and it’s totally free to the patient! (Compare to 2 weeks and $600 to the patient at all my prior clinics.) The testing feels like cheating, like practicing medicine on easy-mode.

On the other hand, information can raise more questions than it answers, especially if it’s not actionable. We discovered that one infection plaguing us (of several!) was a potentially dangerous one for kiddos, called STEC (⚠ if you google that, you’ll get disgusting pictures ⚠). Had I diagnosed STEC in a patient back home in Oregon, as part of several concomitant infections, in a kiddo with a high fever, who was losing weight… Well, that’s a slam dunk hospital admission for aggressive IV fluids and close monitoring. But we don’t have that sort of safety net here, and there’s not anything else you can do! I was about to start off my first post as medical provider by MEDEVAC’ing my own family.

Fortunately, although the kids were sick, they weren’t quite THAT sick… and by the time I put a name to their infection, they were improving, thank Heavens. Still, the testing was a double-edged sword. Did we really want to know how close to the precipice they had been?

Sadly, it hasn’t been *merely* dangerous GI illnesses keeping us down. Between all the flying during the transit from Oregon to DC to Bishkek… between new workplaces and new schools… between COVID and influenza season ramping up… we’ve had cold after cold after cold. All these places we’re traveling seem to have slightly different variations of the respiratory infections that our immune systems are used to. As a family, we’re taking a Pokemon approach to germs: Gotta catch ’em all!

This is Jen, adding a little note. Cameron has been doing an amazing job balancing his patients at work and his patients at home. We very blessed to have him. And thanks to many prayers on our behalf, we’re all doing much better this week. After today the older kids will have finished their first full week of school in several months. Yay!