It has been a very long day but sitting here at the end of it I’m really content so thanks for all your prayers everyone. For those who don’t know the current adventure I’m in is attempting to get Abraham a legit diagnosis. For a little background (tune out for this next paragraph if you follow my blog regularly), Abraham is a sweet 4 year old boy who has some mysterious issue causing hemolytic anemia that the medical system in Soroti is completely unable to address. 12 times in the past 3 years he has gone to the hospital (many resulting in admission). Usually there is a diagnosis of malaria but several times I had tested him and already knew that it was not malaria. They always put him on some enormous doses of antibiotics that rarely seem appropriate, effective or age/weight adjusted. They put him on a moderate dose of steroids which makes practically no sense and he has been on it for more than 6 months now. Every time he gets sick he gets a high fever and urinates blood. He complains of abd pain, gets very jaundiced and occasionally bleeds from his nose. This last time he was vomiting blood and needed to be transfused he was so anemic (but the blood bank didn’t have any blood to give him). They also didn’t give IV fluids causing me much irritation and they upped his steroid dose which made no sense.
So, 6:15 this morning found me packing to go to Kampala. We arranged for Roda, a young lady in the church with fluent English, to come along as translator and Abraham’s father Emma, as his mother has 4 other children to stay home with. Abraham is well at the moment causing us to discuss if we should wait but every time he gets sicker than the last and one of these times he isn’t going to turn around. So we embarked on the arduous 6 hour trek anyway. We arrived at the hospital around 3pm and managed to get into see the pediatrician with only a 1 hour wait. At least she admitted right away that he was a pretty unique case. She ordered labs and an abdominal ultrasound. The labs will take 3 days to get the results but we at least got them drawn today. The ultrasound we’ll get in line and wait for tomorrow.
Emma was last in Kampala as a 15 year old kid and Roda has never been very far out of Soroti. She admitted that she has never used a shower “like this” (with the water coming out above her head instead of in a basin at her feet) until today. They were all very impressed with the sheer volume of the Nile and ordering off a menu at dinner was surprisingly complicated for the adults. Abraham seems to be oblivious to it all except traffic noise which he mimicked for the entire two hours we were stuck in Kampala traffic today. (There are a surprisingly large variety of horn sounds when you pay attention!) So that was our day. Please keep praying!
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