#108 Shanksteps – Fight for life
I do not usually yell at parents; especially in French. In this case however, I made sure that every word I was saying was translated into the tribal language, Mafa. I think that the nurse translating for me was a bit embarrassed by my actions, and not entirely in agreement with what I was saying. Guedana had come in two days before with malaria and jaundice. The day prior to my yelling spree, he had been eating and talking, now he was comatose, with eyes the color of a school bus, and peeing
coca-cola colored urine. A very bad sign! As soon as he started in with the hiccups, I knew it would be a battle. The belief here is that if a sick person starts to hiccup, that they will surely die. So, when I entered Guedana’s room and saw that he had the hiccups, I knew I was in for a long day. The parents were set on taking Guedana home to die, and/or to make sacrifices or try traditional medicines. In fact, it was the traditional root powder that got him to this point in the first place.
Here the Mafa believe that if your eyes are yellow, and you can vomit enough (bile) yellow stuff, that you will be healed. Unfortunately, more often than not, the patients I have seen, that have taken this traditional root, have come in with severe jaundice and liver failure. Did they have severe liver failure first and the root did nothing, or did the drug make a bad problem, worse. I have no way to know for sure, but after seeing so many people really sick after taking this “medicine”, I sure
believe that it hasn’t helped. In Guedana’s case, his parents had given him the root two days in a row. When he didn’t get better, they decided to bring him to the hospital.
So, there I was, arguing with the parents’ “rights” to take 3-year-old Guedana home. I said that I was the advocate for the child. If I wasn’t going to be, who would? I told his parents that God loved this child and so did I, and that I would NOT let them take him home knowing that he still had a chance to live. They insisted that they needed to leave. I told them that they could leave, but that the child had to remain at the hospital. I assured them that I would take care of him and carry
him around on my back. After much discussion, they decided to stay (with the child). First hurdle overcome. I wrote the (expensive) prescription for care (and told them I would pay for it), then went off to start the rest of my rounds. Ten minutes later the nurse came to me saying that when she changed Guedana’s IV catheter, that his blood was very pale, and watery. So, back I went to see him. We checked his hematocrit and sure enough he was anemic and not clotting at all. Next hurdle… who
would give blood. We have no blood bank here, so usually we search for a blood match with the family. Dad was the same blood type but afraid to give. He, like many here, believe that each person only has a certain amount of blood, and if we take some from him, it means that he has less and will be weaker for the rest of his life. We finally convinced him to go to the lab; he went but refused to have his blood taken. Finally after what seemed like an eternity of heated discussion and pressure,
he agreed to give 200 ml of his own blood to save the life of his child. In the mean time I gave Guedana Vitamin K to help with clotting. I left to continue rounds. Ten minutes later, the nurse came again to tell me that he was pooping blood. I found myself back in his room looking at a mixture of blood and mucous that had just appeared. With his liver failure as bad as it was, he wasn’t clotting very well. The nurse had just placed a nasogastric tube that was now filled with blood. I started
to wonder if the parents had been right in their assumption that he would surely die. I gave him Cimetidine IV to decrease the acid in his stomach at about the same time as he started to receive the blood transfusion. I had been praying for him this whole time, but now I found Greg and Ambassador (one of the maintenance men) and the nurse, Eliza, and we had a small group prayer for him, and his parents. I again tried to finish rounds. After about 30 minutes, Eliza again found me to tell me that
his breathing pattern had changed. In fact he was hardly breathing, just an occasional breath every so often. With everything he had gone through that day, I was pretty sure that this should have been the end. I carried him to the emergency room where we have an oxygen concentrator. I had held off giving him oxygen because our ER had been crazy busy for the past week, and they really needed the bed there for the patients coming in. Anyhow, I put him on oxygen and his breathing started to normalize.
So, there we were, with three different IV bags hanging; an NG tube coming out of his nose; a nasal cannula in his nose for oxygen administration; and an oxygen saturation monitor probe clipped to his toe. His little corner of our ER was starting to look like an ICU. I prayed for him again and left him in the care of the ER nurse. I checked on him periodically throughout the day, fully expecting the nurse to say that he had died, but fully hoping that God would show how powerful and loving HE is,
and keep him alive.
He stayed like that all the next day. On the third morning, I went to morning report, bypassing the ER because I didn’t want to know yet that he had died. The report was that he had complained all night that there was something in his nose, and begged his brother to take it out. I ran to the ER and let out a scream of glee to see him conscious. He was still very sick, but now didn’t look like he was on death’s door. Finally, the parents weren’t quite so angry at me for vetoing their departure.
Today, two days later, he was sitting up in bed eating a doughnut. His eyes are still yellow, but getting a little less each day. I have been thanking God all day that he has taken this child into HIS care. This seemingly long week has given us a chance to tell his parents (as well as show them) about God’s love. Please pray for Guedana and his parents that they will follow God, and not their old traditional ways.
In His Grip, Audrey (for the Cameroun Shanks)
#108 Shanksteps – Fight for life