Travel a mountain road to a village for a medical clinic, trek along the Indus to visit a former patient, visit a Princess to do a pre-natal check, or watch as very sick patients are brought in to the hospital by local "ambulance", a roped frame bed carried on the shoulders of four men. These stories and many more are related in Doctor Memsaab, as the author draws from diaries, old letters, and memories the story of her life as a medical missionary in the foothills of the Himalayas. She was also a wife and a mother of three active youngsters. The reader gets a glimpse of how she managed these roles as she tells how she and her husband made time for family life with a simple picnic or playing games, and by including the children in the ministry when possible. Whether treating a poor villager or the wealthy elite, the desire was not only to heal physically, but also to treat spiritual needs by demonstrating the compassion and love of Christ, and whenever feasible, presenting the Gospel of salvation through Jesus.

Dr. Memsaab

Stories of a Medical Missionary MomBy Phyllis Irwin

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Phyllis Irwin, M.D.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-2538-4

Contents

Preface....................................................viii1. The Seasons Of My Life..................................12. Voyage To Pakistan - 1956...............................93. Letters Home Our First Year-1956-57.....................134. More Letters Home - 1958................................255. Stories From My Diary...................................306. The Princess Of Amb.....................................347. Compassion..............................................448. Trek To Tribal Area.....................................489. Out Clinics.............................................5810. Trek To Quza Banda.....................................6611. The Low Born...........................................6812. High People-Significant Persons........................7213. The Noons..............................................7914. Kid Missionaries.......................................8515. Orphans................................................8916. Village Trekking.......................................9417. Hippies And Helpers....................................9618. Concerning Chitral.....................................10119. Fruit..................................................11120. F.C. College Lahore....................................12721. The Punjabi Church.....................................13222. Pakistan Revisited.....................................13523. Visiting Pakistan - Again..............................13924. A Woman Travels Alone..................................14425. Afterword..............................................147

Chapter One

The Seasons Of My Life

SPRING began for me when I was born in 1928 in New Albany, Indiana, as the youngest of three. I grew up in the small village of Milltown, near the Ohio River. I had a happy childhood with parents who loved each other and the Lord. I had two older brothers who challenged me to learn to skate, ride a bike, and swim in the river that ran through our town. We were active in our small town church. We were poor, but did not realize it-everyone was poor during those years of depression in the 30's. My father was an auto mechanic and worked 60 hours a week to support his family. The early spring of my life was very happy, of which I have only joyful memories. It was not until many years later that I realized that a solid family was a marvelous gift of God. I was especially aware of this when I saw the damage in those from dysfunctional families. WWII took my two brothers4 off to the Air Force and Navy. My older brother did not return, bringing the first big tragedy in my life. He was the pilot of a B-24 bomber and was shot down over France on his 30th mission. He was 21. This had a profound effect on me and caused me to think of eternal values. The Lord brought me into a personal experience of salvation just before my senior year of high school-the old fashioned way by going to the altar at a revival meeting. That spiritual event changed my life and gave me a focus.

I went to Asbury College where I was awed by the big world that opened up to me. My small town environment hedged in my world. At college I heard missionaries who opened up the whole world of need and opportunities to serve Jesus in other cultures. I was challenged to career missionary service. There was no such thing as short term missions back then. When I committed my life to be a missionary, there was no turning back. I never again considered anything else. This included my willingness to go single. When I surrendered even this to the Lord, He gave me real peace and joy. I changed my major to pre-med and applied to medical schools in my senior year. In those days not many women entered medicine. I was one of four females in my class of 150, even though applications flooded in from post-war vets on the GI Bill.

During my freshman year of medical school on the Bloomington campus, I met Russ Irwin through Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship. I made sure on our first date that he was planning on being a missionary-or there would not have been a second date! He delights in telling how I "popped the question" on our first date! We were married after our sophomore years in medical school and seminary. We graduated from our respective schools in 1954.

My year of internship took us to a hospital in Riverside, CA. While there, Russ worked in the x-ray department and also pastored a small church. During those years, the Lord led step by step to a mission board, TEAM, and to a Muslim field, West Pakistan. By the time we were back in Indianapolis for my Obstetrics and Gynecology residency, we were pretty well set for overseas. Then his draft board informed him that if we intended to go abroad as missionaries, we had better go, as his number was coming up, and they had no more valid exemptions for him.

Some people questioned why we would go half way around the world to some wild place with a baby, when we could have successful careers here in comfortable America. Jesus said in Matthew 16:25, "If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up for life for me, you will find true life." In 1956 we sailed for West Pakistan with our year-old daughter Patty. Somewhere on that voyage my spring changed to summer! Josh l:9 was the verse the Lord gave me as we started on the unknown. "Fear not, neither be thou dismayed, for I the Lord thy God am with thee whithersoever thou goest."

* * *

SUMMER: These were busy years, roughly from age 28 to 45. They were productive years. We helped build a hospital in the Northwest Frontier of West Pakistan, raised a family of three, developed a hospital staff, and treated many thousands of patients annually. Our son Nate was born the day before I had my first year language test (I think the test initiated labor!). I delivered him on a dining room table without anesthesia during a monsoon rainstorm in a mountain town in the Himalayas, attended by a lady missionary physician. Since no vehicular traffic was available, she arrived by horse just in time!

I started work at the hospital as soon as my written Urdu tests were done 2 weeks later. Our younger daughter was born in relatively posh facilities back in USA on our first furlough. Now I was challenged with the task of being a Mom with three kids, wife, missionary, medical superintendent and chief staff physician of a 50-bed hospital. The days were sometimes not long enough to get everything done. I absolutely loved medicine, and although I worked many [12.sup.+] hour days for many years, I was fascinated by the variety of pathology and far advanced conditions that confronted us every clinic day. I was moved with compassion by the desperate needs of these poor Muslim patients. In those days and up in our area a male doctor could not see women patients. As word spread that there was a lady doctor at Bach Christian Hospital, patients came from many miles around, especially from the mountains to the north. Some traveled days to reach the hospital.

We saw hopeless, far advanced TB of lung, TB of the spine, bone and joints, nodes, even kidney and skin. There were also horrid childbirth injuries, neglected fractures requiring amputation, disfiguring burn scars, parasitic infections, malnutrition of the worst degree in children, and the dreaded diarrheal diseases that takes so many lives of babies and...