Thursday 29 September 2016

Hospital visits and the loss of a baby.

Hey everyone.

It has been an eventful week for us here in Uganda.
I guess we were not finished with dealing with sickness, this time Ethan was the one to get hit hard.

All day Saturday he was not himself, he was very grizzly and he refused to eat any food, and he was not breastfeeding. His temperature was going up through the day to around 37.8, but we managed to cool him down again by keeping him naked (it is very hot here anyway)
By night time he was still feeling hot so we tried to give him a dose of baby panadol that we keep here, only to have him throw it all up (along with his dinner of pumpkin which was his only food for the day)

We kept a watchful eye on him during the night, and again he started burning up to around 38.1 during the night. We managed to give him some panadol at around 1 am and he cooled down. But again by morning he was still hot, so we made the call to not mess around and take him to the hospital just to check if he was ok.

On Sunday's our hospital that we go to usually only has a small staff working, as most of the main doctors are away for the weekend.
When we took Ethan in and they measured Ethan's temperature there, he had gone right up to 39. The doctors didn't waste anytime, and we realized it was more serious then we thought when they put all the other patients on hold, and called another doctor to come to the hospital to deal with Ethan, who he said on the phone "was a very sick baby, and this is an emergency".
Straight away they put cool towels on him, and they put a suppository up his bum, of what I suspect was perhaps some sort of paracetamol to cool his temp down.

It took a long time to get the cannula into Ethan's veins (the tube that is placed into someones veins so that an IV drip, or medicine can be put into the body)
It took them four times before they finally got it in, because babies are a bit difficult when it comes to getting the needle directly into a vein.
During this time I had to hold Ethan down tightly while he screamed, and three doctors worked on him.
Agnes couldn't handle watching it so she had to leave the room. Some jobs are for daddy to do.

They got the blood tests back and Ethan had a strong dose of malaria. His body was also racked with quite a serious bacterial infection (which the doctor was actually more worried about then the malaria)
He was also anemic.

So that meant we were in the hospital for three full days and two nights. During this time Ethan was put on a drip and given lots of medicine.
It was exhausting for us, because Ethan is at that age where he wants to crawl everywhere and grab everything. And so trying to keep him from ripping the cannula out of his foot was quite tiring.

His fever peaked during Sunday night, and he was in a bad way again (even while being on the drip and on medication)
The doctor ordered another suppository, because they were worried about Ethan going into convulsions because of the high temperature.
We certainly didn't sleep much that night, about 2 hours or so. It was very helpful to have Agnes' sisters around who are great with Ethan, and who Ethan loves very much, so we could have a break during the day.

We were discharged on Tuesday evening, very tired and happy to go home and shower and rest.
Ethan is still on strong medication (all oral medicines) for at least a week. But he doesn't have to be in the hospital getting injections. We are just to watch him and make sure he keeps eating and his temperature doesn't go back up.

We know lots of people have been praying for us, and One Hope church sent out a prayer request, and we thank you all.
It was a bit of a scary thing, and rather serious from what the doctor told us. But Ethan responded very positively to all the medicine, and by God's providence his little body is well on its way to healing.






On his way up in this last picture (but still having heavy eyes)

Last Thursday morning we were woken up very early by our local pastor here (around 6 am) seeing this pastor calling this early in the morning I already knew something must have happened.
A young married couple that Agnes and I are friends with, and who are quite known in the HB community, had given birth to their first child on Tuesday morning.

Pastor George had called to let us know the baby had died during the night on Thursday.
Agnes and I had no idea the baby was sick, we were even planning to visit the baby that day.
It is devastating news that rocked the whole community.
From what it sounds like, the baby perhaps died of dehydration or overheating. He was not feeding, had dierreah and a high temperature.

I don't want to go too much into the cause of the death, and say too much out of respect for the people around here that we know (and that many of you reading this blog know)
But Agnes and I feel so heartbroken ... this is a death that could of been avoided. A mixture of terrible advice given to the parents, a lack of understanding on the seriousness of the situation, and a lack of money, or being able to borrow money from people, to take the baby to the hospital, are all thrown into the mix.

All in all, it seems that this death could of been avoided.
The parents are so shattered, and I can't imagine the pain they are going through.

Agnes and I went up to their house at 6.30 in the morning (after the phone call)
I will never forgot that scene. Aggie and I were a part of a handful of the first people to arrive. About 6 of us just sat in their small house with the baby's body laid in the middle, and the mother wept while we all just sat quietly.
I remember the baby looking as if it was a very healthy baby. He didn't look dead, almost peaceful, like a sleeping baby, like he would stir or wake up any second.

The father, who I am friends with, was sitting behind his house by himself, with tears rolling down his cheeks and calmly looking into the horizon he was repeating to me that he knew that the baby was sick, and he had wanted to take the baby to the hospital.

I will never forget that scene. Over the next hour the front garden of this house swelled with local people from the community.
The way people deal with grief here is something that really touches me.
So many people come, and they just sit in silence. That is all. They don't talk or try and give advice or words of comfort.
They just come and sit with the people grieving. They sometimes sit for hours (and even days) in silence, often crying alongside the ones grieving. 

The local community here have a strong faith in the Lord, and the parents, although in incredible pain, have expressed how they put their trust in God.

It is hard to ask the question of 'why?' in such situations. Pain and suffering are real. You live long enough in this world .. your heart will bleed.
And yet taking God away from the equation, because of the 'why?' question, doesn't seem to give people any more comfort.

I find that people who can navigate through suffering very strongly, are people who stand on the foundation of a belief in a sovereign loving God.

As I once heard John Piper quote in a sermon 'Through the deepest possible pain, God is enough. God is enough. He is good. He will take care of us. He will satisfy us. He will get us through this. He is our treasure. Whom have I in heaven but you, and on earth there is nothing that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart and my little child may fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever '

I have seen this lived out in the lives of people grieving here. Who put all their trust in God, even through the storms of life.
I read a quote on the internet that very day that was moving. It was a quote by the early church. When an infant had died the early church used to say "He passed through this world, without ever being touched by sin, straight into the arms of the Lord"

We have hope that this life is not all that there is. That one day all things will be made new and all sad things made untrue, for those who have faith and belief in the Lord.

So we go through the pain and the storms of life, when people we know and love are taken away from us. But we are anchored in God, who cannot be taken away from us.


Once again we thank all of you who have been praying for us. We love all of you and we thank you for your support.



Monday 19 September 2016

Empower

Hey everyone, sorry for the delay in writing an update.

Since I last wrote my previous blog we have all pretty much recovered from the sickness we were all feeling.
Except for Ethan getting a nasty rash that has lasted three weeks, we are all feeling on top of it.

If you read my last blog I talked about a few people with serious illnesses.
Thank God that Esther, the women with cancer in her arm, managed to get more medical help, and hopefully will make a recovery.

The young baby that was put on oxygen has also now been discharged from the hospital and is doing better.
Thank you for your prayers.

We recently ran an empower trauma rehabilitation program with our tailoring girls.
It was an interest time, and full of both joys and challenges.
All of the young women expressed how helpful it was for them to be able to share their stories. Many of them forgave people in their life that they had been holding anger towards.
We also had a few of them wanting to surrender their lives to Christ.

The challenging part about empower was the fact that it is very difficult to help someone heal from trauma, when the situation they are in right now is incredibly traumatic.
Without giving away their personal stories, we have some girls that are in rather dangerous, abusive living conditions.
It raises a bunch of questions for us, in what is our role, how do we best support these girls and do we take any action.
Please pray for the young women, for their home lives, for protection, and for wisdom for how we deal with them.







So just a short update for now! It feels like the rains have kicked in, thunder storms all morning and it has not stopped raining yet!
That usually mean lots of power outages as well though!