hospital

“She’s my Favorite Daughter…”

If you are like me, those words probably make you a little uncomfortable. You’re not supposed to feel that way, and if you do, you are definitely not supposed to say it. Sitting across from an older Kenyan gentleman, I shifted uneasily in my seat. Maybe it was the cultural divide; perhaps it was simply a challenge of translation; or maybe he meant exactly what I heard the translator say… I couldn’t be sure at that moment. The meaning the words carried were intensely clear, though. The young teenage girl lying in the ICU bed beside us was immeasurably important to her father, more important than his own life. The comment was not the only reason I felt uncomfortable, though. I was fumbling with my words, trying to tell him that there was very little we could do for his daughter. She suffered from a condition called rheumatic heart disease, and it appeared that her disease had progressed beyond the point where we could help. She was going to die. The best we could hope for was to temporarily stabilize her and ease her discomfort, and even that would be very expensive. Despite the dramatically reduced costs in a mission hospital, ICU care can be financially devastating when you make less than 500 shillings ($5) per day. It soon became clear that he understood her extremely poor prognosis and the cost. He chose hope. I couldn’t blame him. Even as I desperately tried to block the thought from entering my mind, I could still see the faces of my own precious children lying on the hospital bed beside me. I didn’t understand at that moment, though, how deep his hope went.

Most of us in the West have forgotten, or never known, the devastating terror of rheumatic heart disease. We know we are supposed to take strep throat seriously, but we’re not sure why. Without a simple treatment with antibiotics, somewhere between 1 and 3 percent of people who have strep throat will develop rheumatic fever. Many who develop rheumatic fever will subsequently develop rheumatic heart disease, and without surgery, almost all of those will die. In my 10 years as a pediatrician in the US, I never saw a single case of rheumatic fever. In my 6 months in Kenya, I saw at least 10 children die, and many more suffering from the cruel clutches of this terrible disease. Thanks to the heroic efforts of a few surgeons and teams of specialists from the US, some of these kids are given new hope with lifesaving heart surgery. Many are too sick, beyond the point where surgery is an option. Every single one of these tragic stories is preventable.

A few hours after our first conversation, I again sat with this kind Kenyan man. This time, fighting back tears, I had to explain to him that his daughter had died. I didn’t know what to expect. I had seen this news crush the strongest and reduce them to a weeping pile on the floor. As I lamely said “I’m so sorry,” his response was shocking. With tears on his face, he looked at me and said, “Why are you sorry? You did everything you could.” He went on to explain the depth of his hope. He knew his precious child had trusted in the saving mercy of Jesus, the same Lord He had given his life to. Because of this unshakeable hope he could boldly say, in defiance of the tragedy, that he knew he would see her again. He could even rejoice that her earthly suffering had come to an end. She was in paradise with her Lord.

The testimony of this man’s faith shook me. It is rare that we catch a glimpse of the shining crown of glory our Lord places on His saints on this side of eternity. My prayer for this new year is that I can live out what I know to be true, what this humble man so vividly revealed. The lyrics of this song say it better than I even could:

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

I pray the same for all of you. If you don’t know that hope that we have in Christ, I would love to tell you more about it (please contact us!). If you would like to partner with us as we seek to share this hope with others and work to prevent the scourge of diseases like rheumatic heart disease from devastating other families in Kenya, please consider donating to our ministry.

“so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.” -1 Peter 4:2

It’s difficult to believe that we have been in Kenya nearly 5 months now. It highlights how challenging it can be to mark the passing of time in our everyday lives. We try to increase our awareness by remembering birthdays, anniversaries and holidays while the years march on. When I look at pictures of my children only a few years ago, though, I am keenly aware of how the years slip by at lightning speed.

Living outside of my “everyday life” for the last 5 months has really done a number on my perception of time. One day I feel like time is moving at a snail’s pace, while the next I can’t believe how much time has passed. There is one way, though, of marking the passage of time here that keeps me from forgetting time’s relentless march forward. His name is Samuel.*

I met him in my second week working here, which also happened to be the day after his 16^th birthday. He seems like a tall, quiet young man. I say “seems” because I have never seen him stand nor heard him talk. He has a condition know as Guillain Barre Syndrome, or GBS. We don’t really know why it happens; perhaps it is a virus or medication or something else, but the immune system starts attacking its own nerve cells. It starts with a little weakness in the hands and feet, and then the weakness spreads upward toward the vital muscles that help you breathe. This is about the time in the process when we met Samuel. Within 12 hours of his admission, we had to put a tube through his mouth and into his lungs so that a machine could do the work that his respiratory muscles could no longer do.

And then we waited. And waited. And waited.

We know that most people with this condition eventually recover, sometimes even completely, so we waited. We rejoiced when he could shrug his shoulder, we groaned when his skin began to break down from constant pressure over his bony frame. We celebrated when his thumb gave the slightest twitch, and we vigilantly treated every fever or indication of infection. Then it happened.

We were finally able to turn off the machine and he could breathe on his own! 3 months on the ventilator, and he could finally be wheeled out of the intensive care unit to bask in the sun (which happens to be one of the favorite things for kids to do in the hospital here). His recovery really seemed to be progressing well, and we were starting to think about getting him home. Then the fever came back.

Seemingly out of nowhere, he could no longer support his own breathing and we had to put him back on the ventilator. The new extra sound we heard when we listened to his heart filled us with dread. And when we received the results from the echocardiogram (heart ultrasound), our worst fears were confirmed. Samuel had developed bacterial endocarditis, an infection of the valves within the heart that allow the blood to flow forward and not backward. This would be bad enough, but it was even worse than we could have imagined. The bacteria had actually eaten a hole in one of the valves. Now every time his heart beat, some of the blood went forward and some of it went back into the lungs. As one visiting cardiologist put it, “this is not compatible with life” for very long. The clock was ticking.

The race to get Samuel off the ventilator and strong enough for surgery had begun. Now nearly 2 months later, it seems this is a race we cannot win. His muscles were slowly getting stronger, but the amount of work his lungs have to do is simply too much for his feeble new-found strength to overcome. And the clock keeps ticking.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Actually, is anything desperate in the Lord’s hands? Of course the answer to that is “No.” Lord willing, though, Samuel will have surgery next week to repair his broken heart. God has placed a faithful, gifted surgeon here who is willing to take a risk on a patient that most would consider too sick for surgery. This is where you come in to the story.

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” ~James 5:16

None of us on our own deserve to be called righteous, but if we trust in Christ, we are credited with His perfect righteousness (2 Cor 5:21). Please pray!

Pray that the surgery will happen. Pray that God will guide the surgeon’s hands and that the surgery will go well. Pray that Samuel will have a full recovery from the surgery and from the GBS. But the clock is also ticking for another reason. Samuel and his family are Muslim. As was true for all of us who are now alive in Christ, their spiritual hearts are broken and in need of repair by the great Physician. Samuel has heard the good news of the Gospel many times from different people during his 5 months in the hospital. Pray that God will grant Him faith and grace for eternal life… true life (Eph 2:8-9). May God use His life to reach the hearts of people we could never reach. As He promised… for our good and His glory! (Rom 8:28)

*Samuel’s name was changed for this post, for his protection. God knows his name.