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 16th 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.
