The Go-Between
At 11:00 in the morning, the grandmother finally arrived with a baby tied to her back. We had been waiting for them all morning. A mixture of relief and urgency filled my lungs. Relief that they were finally here. Urgency because I saw the state of the child.
Let me tell you some pieces of her story. Sabilan is a 1-year old baby girl in the infants in distress program whose mother died. She is cared for by her grandmother. Just a few months ago, an incident happened when a young girl who was watching Sabilan accidentally dropped her. When she fell, apparently on her head, she immediately started seizing. When Rebeca, the head of our infant program, heard about the incident, she instructed the father of the baby and the grandmother to take Sabilan to the hospital for a neurological assessment. Rebeca counseled them on three different occasions over the course of three months, but they never followed through because they said she was fine and had not had any further problems.
This week Sabilan fell very sick with malaria, had a high fever, and started convulsing again all through the night. Rebeca intervened until the family took Sabilan to the local clinic, where she stayed overnight and was then referred to our larger hospital here in the city where we live. When she arrived, she was limp, lethargic, and very febrile. A blood test showed her hemoglobin to be a low 4.9, meaning that she needed a blood transfusion. The closest place was an hour and a half away, and the only ambulance was already two hours away in the opposite direction. My car, currently being used as an ambulance to transport another sick patient to Ouagadougou, was also unavailable.
I stayed with Sabilan for most of the day until we had arranged for a vehicle to transport us to the nearest blood transfusion center. We finally left at 5:00pm and got Sabilan admitted around 7:00pm.
Let me explain something about medical care in Burkina Faso. Many of the conveniences that we expect from a hospital in America are non-existent. The things that we know nurses and doctors do for patients in the United States are responsibilities of the patient and family - such as cleaning up messes, providing linens and food, taking prescriptions to the pharmacy to get the medicine that the nurses need to administer, buying the gloves and syringes and tubing they need, taking lab requests to the lab, and picking up results. Sabilan's grandmother and father don't speak French, had never been to a hospital of this size, didn't know how to navigate the system, and were already paralyzed by anxiety over the baby. That's why Rebeca, Emily, and I walked the halls up and down, taking care of everything until we received a big red OK written on the blood form that allowed Sabilan to receive blood.
I began that morning hoping to treat and stabilize a child with severe malaria in just a few hours. Instead, we ended up with a 24-hour adventure that included no blood at the local hospital, no ambulance to transport, no dinner until 10:00 pm, and no overnight bag in an unfamiliar city. When we left our city for the hospital, we had no idea we would stay overnight, which is why we brought nothing but the clothes on our backs. Sometimes nothing goes as planned and you just have to roll with it, but I think that happens more often in Africa than any place on the planet, which makes our lives such a constant adventure.
When we finally sat down to eat dinner, we found an acceptable-looking place (one that isn't just a roadside table that gets dusted by all the traffic); at least this food stand had a curtain that blocked the kitchen from the concrete slab where we sat on wobbly plastic chairs. As soon as we sat down, the electricity went out and the waiter told us that all the food was gone. "That's just fitting," Emily said as we sat in the dark, totally exhausted. When a generator kicked in and some lights flickered on, I said in amazement, "Wow, I'm impressed they have a generator." "Yeah, but they don't have any food!" Emily added. She never fails to make me laugh when we are tired and spent.
I needed her humor again that night when we finally laid down to sleep (in our same clothes, by the way, and in my same one-a-day contacts that I had no choice but to sleep in) on a hard mattress with only a thin fitted sheet in a pretty lousy African hotel room. "Hey, there's crown molding," she said as she stared at the ceiling. What I heard was, "Hey, everything's molding." Both were true, and we laughed ourselves to sleep, which didn't take long.
We checked in on Sabilan the following morning and found a revived child. She had slept well, eaten something that morning, and was even fussing and trying to make noises at her grandmother, who never let her side. After seeing a limp, lifeless little girl the night before, we were never so happy to see her fuss. Rebeca spoke with the new doctors coming on shift fro the day to better explain the situation and tell the child's history, and then we left with confidence that she was going to be alright.
Rebeca left the hospital singing aloud and praising God. He had done it. He provided safe transport. He provided passage through three police controls without a single one asking for my drivers license, which I didn't have because it was in my car in the way to Ouagadougou. He provided blood. He provided caring doctors and nurses. He provided bread for us to eat and a bed to sleep in. He provided the strength we needed to be at Sabilan's side for thirteen hours straight. He saved Sabilan's life. Rebeca has seen many stories end differently, but not so today.
I don't doubt for a minute that we did the right thing. It took all day, all of our patience, and all of our strength and energy, but if we hadn't been there, the end result could have been very different. We have sent babies to this same hospital before, only to have then die. This is because without a proper go-between, the right care is not given. Without our presence, the family could have arrived to the hospital, not known where to go, and never been seen. Tired and not knowing what to do, they could have returned to the village and the baby could have died on the way back. It sounds crazy, maybe even dramatic, but it happens more often than you would want to believe.
This is not to say that we are indispensable. We're not. But we are available, and God uses willing servants.
This is not to say that doctors and nurses are negligent (although sometimes they are) or that hospitals are inadequate (although they are resource-limited). It's just that they have so many patients and so little resources that they do the best that they can.
This is also not to say that the family is negligent, uneducated, or uncaring towards the child. It's more like they just don't understand the situation, they are afraid, and they don't know what to do. Here, in a fatalistic culture, when you don't know what to do, you do nothing and let fate have its way.
With an overwhelmed medical staff and a family that didn't know how to speak French or navigate the medical system, that's where we stepped in and connected the two. That's why our team's presence was so essential. Baby Sabilan just needed an advocate - someone to connect the doctors with the patient, someone to adequately explain what was going on, someone to walk alongside the family during their fear of the unknown, someone to intercede. It's case management, really, and it's absolutely essential to getting a child the care that she needs.
Sometimes I really miss being a bedside nurse and I wonder if I'm even being a good nurse at all, and then something like this happens and I don't doubt for a minute that I am exactly where God wants me to be.
Rebeca said, "These children did not choose to be orphans. They didn't choose their environment or their caregivers. They didn't choose to be sick." If I could add, I would say also that they didn't choose to be born in Burkina Faso into a resource limited environment. They are innocent victims of location. "That's why I will do everything I can for a child," Rebeca said, "and then trust God to accomplish his will."
Rebeca does what she says. She absolutely spends herself for the sake of the orphans and infants in distress in our program, and I am nothing but honored to walk alongside her in this journey. It means long days, late nights, hunger, tears, and fatigue, but it's all worth it. "Doing God's work is never easy," she said, "but he is faithful."
I think about Jesus when he said, "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." Even though it wore us out, we would gladly spend all our time, efforts, energies, and resources on behalf of Jesus if he had been that child. So that's what we do in his name for his little ones.
Let me tell you some pieces of her story. Sabilan is a 1-year old baby girl in the infants in distress program whose mother died. She is cared for by her grandmother. Just a few months ago, an incident happened when a young girl who was watching Sabilan accidentally dropped her. When she fell, apparently on her head, she immediately started seizing. When Rebeca, the head of our infant program, heard about the incident, she instructed the father of the baby and the grandmother to take Sabilan to the hospital for a neurological assessment. Rebeca counseled them on three different occasions over the course of three months, but they never followed through because they said she was fine and had not had any further problems.
This week Sabilan fell very sick with malaria, had a high fever, and started convulsing again all through the night. Rebeca intervened until the family took Sabilan to the local clinic, where she stayed overnight and was then referred to our larger hospital here in the city where we live. When she arrived, she was limp, lethargic, and very febrile. A blood test showed her hemoglobin to be a low 4.9, meaning that she needed a blood transfusion. The closest place was an hour and a half away, and the only ambulance was already two hours away in the opposite direction. My car, currently being used as an ambulance to transport another sick patient to Ouagadougou, was also unavailable.
I stayed with Sabilan for most of the day until we had arranged for a vehicle to transport us to the nearest blood transfusion center. We finally left at 5:00pm and got Sabilan admitted around 7:00pm.
Let me explain something about medical care in Burkina Faso. Many of the conveniences that we expect from a hospital in America are non-existent. The things that we know nurses and doctors do for patients in the United States are responsibilities of the patient and family - such as cleaning up messes, providing linens and food, taking prescriptions to the pharmacy to get the medicine that the nurses need to administer, buying the gloves and syringes and tubing they need, taking lab requests to the lab, and picking up results. Sabilan's grandmother and father don't speak French, had never been to a hospital of this size, didn't know how to navigate the system, and were already paralyzed by anxiety over the baby. That's why Rebeca, Emily, and I walked the halls up and down, taking care of everything until we received a big red OK written on the blood form that allowed Sabilan to receive blood.
I began that morning hoping to treat and stabilize a child with severe malaria in just a few hours. Instead, we ended up with a 24-hour adventure that included no blood at the local hospital, no ambulance to transport, no dinner until 10:00 pm, and no overnight bag in an unfamiliar city. When we left our city for the hospital, we had no idea we would stay overnight, which is why we brought nothing but the clothes on our backs. Sometimes nothing goes as planned and you just have to roll with it, but I think that happens more often in Africa than any place on the planet, which makes our lives such a constant adventure.
When we finally sat down to eat dinner, we found an acceptable-looking place (one that isn't just a roadside table that gets dusted by all the traffic); at least this food stand had a curtain that blocked the kitchen from the concrete slab where we sat on wobbly plastic chairs. As soon as we sat down, the electricity went out and the waiter told us that all the food was gone. "That's just fitting," Emily said as we sat in the dark, totally exhausted. When a generator kicked in and some lights flickered on, I said in amazement, "Wow, I'm impressed they have a generator." "Yeah, but they don't have any food!" Emily added. She never fails to make me laugh when we are tired and spent.
I needed her humor again that night when we finally laid down to sleep (in our same clothes, by the way, and in my same one-a-day contacts that I had no choice but to sleep in) on a hard mattress with only a thin fitted sheet in a pretty lousy African hotel room. "Hey, there's crown molding," she said as she stared at the ceiling. What I heard was, "Hey, everything's molding." Both were true, and we laughed ourselves to sleep, which didn't take long.
We checked in on Sabilan the following morning and found a revived child. She had slept well, eaten something that morning, and was even fussing and trying to make noises at her grandmother, who never let her side. After seeing a limp, lifeless little girl the night before, we were never so happy to see her fuss. Rebeca spoke with the new doctors coming on shift fro the day to better explain the situation and tell the child's history, and then we left with confidence that she was going to be alright.
Rebeca left the hospital singing aloud and praising God. He had done it. He provided safe transport. He provided passage through three police controls without a single one asking for my drivers license, which I didn't have because it was in my car in the way to Ouagadougou. He provided blood. He provided caring doctors and nurses. He provided bread for us to eat and a bed to sleep in. He provided the strength we needed to be at Sabilan's side for thirteen hours straight. He saved Sabilan's life. Rebeca has seen many stories end differently, but not so today.
I don't doubt for a minute that we did the right thing. It took all day, all of our patience, and all of our strength and energy, but if we hadn't been there, the end result could have been very different. We have sent babies to this same hospital before, only to have then die. This is because without a proper go-between, the right care is not given. Without our presence, the family could have arrived to the hospital, not known where to go, and never been seen. Tired and not knowing what to do, they could have returned to the village and the baby could have died on the way back. It sounds crazy, maybe even dramatic, but it happens more often than you would want to believe.
This is not to say that we are indispensable. We're not. But we are available, and God uses willing servants.
This is not to say that doctors and nurses are negligent (although sometimes they are) or that hospitals are inadequate (although they are resource-limited). It's just that they have so many patients and so little resources that they do the best that they can.
This is also not to say that the family is negligent, uneducated, or uncaring towards the child. It's more like they just don't understand the situation, they are afraid, and they don't know what to do. Here, in a fatalistic culture, when you don't know what to do, you do nothing and let fate have its way.
With an overwhelmed medical staff and a family that didn't know how to speak French or navigate the medical system, that's where we stepped in and connected the two. That's why our team's presence was so essential. Baby Sabilan just needed an advocate - someone to connect the doctors with the patient, someone to adequately explain what was going on, someone to walk alongside the family during their fear of the unknown, someone to intercede. It's case management, really, and it's absolutely essential to getting a child the care that she needs.
Sometimes I really miss being a bedside nurse and I wonder if I'm even being a good nurse at all, and then something like this happens and I don't doubt for a minute that I am exactly where God wants me to be.
Rebeca said, "These children did not choose to be orphans. They didn't choose their environment or their caregivers. They didn't choose to be sick." If I could add, I would say also that they didn't choose to be born in Burkina Faso into a resource limited environment. They are innocent victims of location. "That's why I will do everything I can for a child," Rebeca said, "and then trust God to accomplish his will."
Rebeca does what she says. She absolutely spends herself for the sake of the orphans and infants in distress in our program, and I am nothing but honored to walk alongside her in this journey. It means long days, late nights, hunger, tears, and fatigue, but it's all worth it. "Doing God's work is never easy," she said, "but he is faithful."
I think about Jesus when he said, "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." Even though it wore us out, we would gladly spend all our time, efforts, energies, and resources on behalf of Jesus if he had been that child. So that's what we do in his name for his little ones.
Comments
Post a Comment