Wendy Grey Rogerson (1930–2021)

medical-treatment, memoir, nursing, Indonesia, Borneo

If you thought that your third shift weekends working the Emergency Department in a big city hospital were godawful, take a listen to what this young nurse dealt with on a daily basis for two years!
First let me tell you that I have learned that a Geordie is one from Newcastle on Tyne, England, or its environs, and Borneo is an island between the South China Sea and the Java Sea in Indonesia. The time frame of this memoir is late 1959 to 1961. The very remoteness of the area and the oppressive heat and humidity contribute to some of the problems not only then, but in present time as well. Imagine if you were a nurse from England or Ohio transported to rainforest with temperature 80 to 90F with relative humidity of 80% nearly all of the year! And then there's the water, and the snakes, and the disease bearing insects!
So this is her chronicle of adaptation, personal illnesses, making new friends, and relying on old friends and acquaintances to help ease the medical needs of the people she has come to Borneo to serve. I couldn't have done it.
This book needs to be read by many.
I requested and received a free ebook copy from SPCK via NetGalley. Thank you!… (lisätietoja)

Wendy Grey, a Northumberland vicar's daughter, studied nursing to become a medical missionary. She answered a call to Borneo, working at an Anglican mission. Shortly after her arrival, she found herself performing a surgery with a doctor's phone directions. She relates other stories from her time in Borneo, including a suitor whose beliefs did not match hers very strongly. At the end of three years, she returned to England, intending to take another post in a more moderate climate. God had other plans for her. I enjoyed this medical missionary story. Photographs illustrating the text and helping put names with faces were included. I received an electronic copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.… (lisätietoja)