a week in the hospital

Life is full of challenges

Emotional challenges

Physical challenges

Spiritual challenges

Financial challenges

Challenges that are full of heartache and pain. Challenges so often seem impossible to overcome. If I didn’t find my hope in the Lord, every case that I was given this week would have left me 100% hopeless. Looking into the eyes of so many hopeless people remind me of how there is no way to live this life without giving it to the Lord first. Not only had so many of my patients given up on they’re own lives, but they had given up on their children’s lives. They let their circumstances overcome them. They looked at me and told me that they believe it is better for them, and their children, to die than deal with the challenges that come in life. The challenges that I have had to overcome in my own life are NOTHING compared to the people that I am working with. After working in the hospital this week I feel that I have no excuse to complain about ANYTHING ever again.



Monday: The reality of death, because of poverty, hit me hard. One of my 13 year-old patients died. She had congestive heart failure, and there was nothing more the doctors could do. I was trying to get her home to be with her family as she breathed her last breaths. She was so frail, and when looking at her face one could tell she was tired, scared, and confused. She was not talking at this point, so I asked her older brother all of the questions. I sat with her on her bed, shook her hand, and watched her eat, what was to be, her last meal. Seeing as how she was sitting up I had no idea she was so close to death. After lunch we went around the hospital to see a few other patients. About 45min. later we were hunted down by a few of the patients that were in the same room as her. They informed us she had died, and that no one was there. Her brother had just left the hospital to get some corn. She was alone. No one was there as this sweet little girl passed on. I can only pray that she did not feel alone. I pray that she knew the Lord. And I regret deeply not laying hands on her and praying for her before I left the room. I forget the power of prayer. I think we all forget the power of prayer. It also reminded me how short our lives are. God gives us life, and God also takes it away. My prayer is that I don’t waste my life. I don’t want to be on my death bed wondering if I made an impact, I want to be on my death bed with a sense of accomplishment knowing that I loved as hard as I could, prayed as passionately as I could, gave all that I could. The motto of Tenwek hospital is a constant reminder to me of why I am here, “We treat, Jesus Heals.”



Tuesday: I was called into the medical ward to talk with and assess a psychotic patient. She is 28 years old, and was an abandoned orphan. She is not married, and has no kids. After talking with her I realized she has No One. She has no one to help care for her, no one to encourage her, and no one to visit her in the hospital during visitor hours. After working with her all week I came quickly to find out that she has very high days and very low days. Some days she was completely unresponsive to anything we said and asked. She seemed to be in another world. Other days her eyes lit up like she could see the whole world through them. When she was happy she had eyes that made someone look at her twice and say “wow”. They were beautiful. Her case has been one of the most difficult. If she was in America she would be placed in a psychiatric ward, but they don’t have those here. It was time for her to leave the hospital, and we didn’t have a choice but to send her home. We worked on getting her paperwork finished all week. It was frustrating because every time we would get one paper signed and documented we would find out we needed to do something else. When we finally got her released we were on our way to go get her and put her in a taxi, and low and behold she had a seizure. No one really knows if it was a real seizure or if she was faking it because she is very crafty at pretending to be sick. I really think she would live at the hospital if she could. We are still working on her case.



Wednesday: Reika and I were walking around the different wards checking up on all of our clients. When we were in the medical ward a man approached us saying, “I really need help with my bill, because I can’t pay it.” This is the same thing we hear from all of our patients. We have not worked with one person that could actually pay their bill, but what was so interesting about this client was the reason why he was in the hospital. He looked perfectly fine. We asked him why he was admitted and he said “I was shot with an arrow by one of the Massai and I had to have major surgery.” “With an arrow” I repeated. Apparently this is very common. The Masai believe that they own ALL the cattle, so they go on to the Kipsigis land and simply take it. If the kipsisgis do not allow it than a war breaks out. In Kenya, instead of people getting hit by bullets it’s by arrows. Crazy!



Thursday: Thursday’s are always HIV clinic days. We sit in a little office and wait for Dr. Bemm to bring the patients to us. We do an assessment on their social well being, give them a few bags of food, and a water guard. Anna was the last patient that we met with. She was a mother of four, but only had her youngest child with her. After talking with her we found out that She used to be married, but left her husband when he married another wife (polygamy is very common here). She was with child at this time. Before giving birth she was informed that she needed to get HIV tested (this is required for all mothers who are with child). She said that she was not expecting anything but a negative test back. When she found out it was positive she was horrified. She realized that her husbands new wife was HIV+ and she must have infected the both of them, as well as her newborn baby. It has been 1 ½ years since she left her husband, and she has not talked with him since. She is not even aware if he knows that he is HIV+. Anna now lives with her mother. She has not told a single person about her sickness, not even her mother. She told us that her brother and sister-in-law both died, and she was so scared to tell her mother that she was now sick with the disease as well. She was hiding the tears on her face from us the entire time as she was telling the story. I could tell that she was so hurt and so embarrassed.



Friday: We were called up into the hospital in the late hours of the afternoon to help a client in the HIV clinic. We were informed that she was one of our previous clients when she was admitted into the medical ward. Upon getting there we quickly remembered who she was. This young lady was refusing to start her ARV’s for her and her child because she said that she didn’t have enough food. Her and her child are in stage 4 of the aids diseases. We talked with her for over 1 ½ hours trying to communicate to her that if she does not start the meds soon her and her child are both going to die. We asked if she had anyone to go to for help, and she said she didn’t. She was too embarrassed to ask the church for help, to reconcile with her family for help, or to ask a neighbor. She communicated to us that she would rather die than to let people know that she is sick, or to let them know that she just simply needed some food. She has already had two children die of malnutrition. And her third is so close. She has lost all measures of hope. We asked her about her faith and she responded, “I pray every few days, and I read my bible, but only because I do not have anything else to do.” When she sees herself in the future she didn’t picture anything, and when talking about her deceased children she seemed to talk in a way that gave me the vibe that she thinks that they are the lucky ones. After trying to convince her to start the ARV’s as hard as we could we talked to Dr. Bemm. We all decided that we needed to admit them, but we didn’t necessarily admit them for physical reasons. Don’t get me wrong, they are both extremely malnourished, but not to the point of death. We admitted them so that we could hopefully put hope back into her life. We admitted her to share the gospel with her, and let her know that her life does matter; her child’s life matters; and she can overcome this. We have contacted the best counselor at the hospital to talk with her and encourage her. I was also able to look up a good number of verses that talked about Hope, and how to put our trust in the Lord.

One of the main things the Lord showed me this week was how blessed I am. So many of my clients are completely alone. They have no family, no friends, and no support. This is one thing that I’ve never had to deal with. The Lord has blessed me with four amazing brothers, three amazing sister, a beautiful niece, and two of the best parents in the world. They have only encouraged me to follow my dreams, and they’ve done everything in their power to help me reach them. They not only encourage me to follow my dreams, but they encourage my friends to follow their dreams. I have so many amazing friends that I would do anything for. I would not give any of them up for the world. I would be blessed to have just one of them in my life, but the Lord has given me so many. I have had an incredible education where the teachers not only taught me about social work, but they taught me how to live. They asked about my heart and poured themselves into me.



We will be at an orphanage all week. Pray that we would have the energy of a child, so that we can love them well.