Unexpected

Today didn’t go like I’d expected.  Let’s be honest, they rarely do.  I awoke this morning after a restless night.  Our youngest came home yesterday complaining of a headache.  He was weepy and increasingly lethargic as the evening wore on.   I was headed to a Bible study I attend, so I gave him a bit of children’s Tylenol from our dwindling supply and headed next door.  Ryan and I made a game plan that he would push the fluids and put him to bed an hour early.  When I arrived home two hours later, Ryan reported that he’d gone to bed without a fight and all was well.

I visited with my older kids for a bit and was headed to bed when I had an urgency in my spirit that I needed to check on my little guy.  As soon as I placed my hand on his body, I knew he was feverish.  The thermometer quickly confirmed my suspicions with a reading of 103.1.  Realizing we weren’t at the four hour mark for Tylenol and knowing I had used the last of the Children’ Ibuprofen last week, I decided to wait a bit and see what happened.  Forty-five minutes later, I checked again and the thermometer immediately shot up to 104.4.  We made an apologetic 10PM phone call to some colleagues who agreed to let us use a bottle of Children’s ibuprofen so that we could begin to rotate the two.  When I woke Abe for the medicine, he begged me to let him sleep, telling me his head hurt too bad to wake up.  I tried not to panic, but immediately, I began to wonder if we might be dealing with malaria...the serious kind.  

We washed him in cool water and made the decision to start malaria treatment, even though we didn’t have a positive test. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do, but I do know that high fever and severe headache in a country where people regularly die from cerebral malaria, is something I don’t want to mess with.  I’ve heard again and again that early treatment is the key to beating it, and so we treated. After moving his mattress into our room and setting alarms on our phones for the next doses of meds, we decided to try to sleep.  I was up and down checking on him until finally, around midnight, after getting his temp down to 101.7, I drifted off to sleep.  Two hours later, we were up and down as he battled tummy troubles.  It was a rough night.

Of course, the morning came early, but even so, I couldn’t help but be thankful for the gifts it brought.  I had the realization that I had some way to access every medicine my boy needed, as soon as he got sick.  I didn’t have to go and beg for money from my neighbors to buy a single tablet.  We have a vehicle to go to multiple pharmacies to find the remaining treatment that we need.   I have the education to read the pamphlet in the anti-malarial insert.  I have a scale on which to weigh my son for proper dosing and I have abundant food options for him to choose from when his appetite comes back.  When my eyes couldn’t stay open any longer, I was able to put a DVD in my TV and allow my son to watch a video while I slept to the strains of Baloo the Bear singing, “I’ve Wanna Be Like You.”  This happened in my home with my ceiling fan and my soft mattress.  These blessings are so very apparent to me.

Especially today.  Because today, in between moments of caring for my son, I experienced another of my “firsts” in Africa.  This wasn’t a wedding or a baby naming ceremony or a new holiday.  Today was a burial.  It was a small ceremony, held on the corner of the property where I live.  The attendants were just Ryan, 3 of our colleagues, and I, alongside the two gardeners who dug the hole.  The grave was tiny, made for a little bitty baby who was born just a few hours earlier.  There was no casket and no headstone, just a tiny baby girl wrapped in a length of colorful African cloth, laid to rest on the African soil.

Her mother couldn’t be there. She was back in the hospital, having barely escaped with her life.  We pray that she will gain strength and overcome the challenges still ahead regarding her healing.  One of our colleagues had been advocating for her to have much needed pre-natal care since November.  It had become apparent at that time that the baby was not formed in a way that she would be able to survive in this world, but maybe, maybe with the proper care the mama would.  I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say the stories of medical care here, and especially of this mama make me angry and discouraged and disgusted, all at the same time.  But at this moment, beside this tiny grave, that was irrelevant.  

There were a few things that struck me in that moment.  First of all, the sorrow of the whole story...a sick mama with empty arms, a baby girl who will never know life this side of heaven, the unfairness of the lack of medical care in this place.  Secondly, I was struck by the commitment and dedication of my colleagues.  One woman who has invested 30ish years of her life showing the love of Christ in West Africa through her medical wisdom and had asked Ryan and I to join them as they gathered to lay this little one to rest.  She’s seen countless babies born and helped bury far too many of those, she’s advocated for those who need care, she’s showed compassion and care in village after village, and she has consistently done what she could to help others.  I stood beside her as she and the other couple decided on a name for this special baby girl, in a language they have spent decades learning and living in.  I learned from them as they navigated the nuances of the moment and I couldn’t help but wonder if I would ever have the depth of language, culture, and relationships that they have.   I shed tears alongside them and I was privileged to stand among them and offer up my prayers for this precious family.  

So, on what should have been an average Wednesday, I found my schedule adjusted to care for a sick boy and to celebrate the life of one extraordinary baby girl.