It has been a long time since a patient really got to my
heart but I’m feeling a bit wrecked over some kids I took care of
this week. Most of the kids I was with are kjung and were here in Soroti for the Timothy
Retreat. Many of these kids are in the program because they vulnerable and
neglected.
The Timothy Retreat is a lot like a week at camp and I was
filling the role of camp nurse. One little girl, Sabina, was driving me nuts
because she was coming to me over and over again with physical complaints (usually
when I was in the middle of something else).
But one of the things all the kids got was a brief health exam because
very few get their basic medical needs met and in my time with Sabina I
realized she did possibly have something going on. She had some adventitious
lung sounds and enough other symptoms to make me suspicious of TB. Her exam also increased my sympathy for her
quite a bit. She in 13 but doesn't even tip the scale at 40 kg (less than 90
pounds). She wasn't just seeking attention but possibly saw me as her only
chance at getting some help before being send back to Karamoja. So she was put
on my follow up list and I made plans to get her a chest x-ray. I had characterized her as one of the slightly
slower kids because for Primary 5 (roughly 5th grade) her English
was pretty poor. But while we were at the clinic she started translating easily
between Teso and Nakaramojung for the doctor and one of the other kids I had brought. So, she was poor in English but fluent in two other languages. When
I asked her about it, she explained that her father was Teso (a different
tribe) and when she was little he had told her she wasn’t to speak Nakaramojung
when she was with him. Her mother is
Karamojung but estranged from her father. She hasn’t seen her mother in years
and her father sent her away to live with an “auntie” because “he was tired of
caring for me.” So, now she lives with a distant cousin of her mother because
she was the only family who would take her in. Sabina says frankly that her auntie
abuses her but she only has to stay with her when she is not at boarding
school.
Frustratingly, there was no power when we were at the clinic
so I never did get her a chest x-ray but I’ll follow up with her in a few weeks
and see how she is doing.
Then there is Abraham. He is the closest I’ve ever come to
taking a child home with me. Abraham is bright but obviously quite insecure and
unsure of himself. He is new to the
Timothy program and very neglected. At 14 years old he is also in less than the
25th percentile for weight and has a general look of undernourishment
about him. I was told that he has no home, so for this Christmas break he will just stay in the empty dorm at school because he has nowhere to go. He
came to the retreat with the one shirt he had that wasn't his school uniform
and one pair of torn shorts. When he came in for his medical assessment he told
me his teeth hurt and when I looked in his mouth I nearly gagged. His mouth is
hands down the worse I’ve seen outside of people who have used methamphetamine.
He told me he had been taken to the doctor for the pain in his mouth back in
2012 but he didn’t have any money for treatment so nothing was done. I arranged with Daniel (as a vet, teeth
seemed more his specialty than mine!) to take Abraham to the dentist who
removed a rotten molar. I’m sure more needs to be done but we’ll let the poor
kid recover from that first and I’ll try to follow up soon.
After the extraction he had come back to the church and I
checked on his bleeding a few times and got him something to drink. I gave him some pain meds and antibiotics a
few times and was trying to keep him as comfortable as possible under the
circumstances. I had gone home for a few
hours but went back to the retreat before the kids went to bed for the night to
check on him again and make sure he had eaten something. As I was sitting with him while he swallowed
the fistful of meds I was making him take, he made the statement “You are
taking care of me.” It was like he was processing why I was there. He was kind
of just staring at me. “Thank you” he said. I almost cried. No child should
have to say thank you for having their basic, human needs met. The next morning as they were loading on the
bus to head back to Karamoja again he just came up to me and quietly said thank
you again. As it was day 5 of a very full week of camp (camp counselors you
know the feeling right?) I was feeling dragged out and tired. And here was this kid who was about to head
back to an empty dorm, less than 24 hours after a rather painful procedure,
with only some Tylenol, and what to look forward to? And he was appreciating that I had spent a
few extra minutes paying attention to him.
Father God, May your
favor rest on this boy in a special way this Christmas. May your peace surround
him in a supernatural way and will you show yourself to be the loving Dad he
doesn’t have. I pray for all these children, that they will know you and trust
you as their Father when their earthly fathers have failed them. Please meet
their needs out of your glorious riches in Christ Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
