Not Every Day Is Going to be Happy but Yesterday Was Pretty Bad - Traveling With Kids in Kenya

Left To Right Our Family, Zach (med student here for the summer),
Jill, Kristin, Corrine

Yesterday evening Gigi said, "I wish we could go home.  All of our friends are leaving and it is getting really lonely without them."  The thing is she is sort of right.  The beginning of our trip coincided with the second half of Kristin, another Med/Ped resident's, trip, the one month Corinne, a surgery resident, was here, and the one month that Jill, a pediatrician who works with the program was here doing cross cover.  These ladies are just so nice and amazing.  We've done quite a few trips and dinners with them and I can attest that we probably wouldn't have made it through most of our hikes if it weren't for them and all their help.  Throw Mo in the group who we will lucky have for another month and you just have a group of amazing, fun, helpful people to hang out with.  In a short time I just felt exceptionally close to these people and I was really sad to see them go.  On Sunday we dropped Kristin off in Nakuru before heading home.  On Monday Corinne left at like in five in the morning.  Jill could see I was pretty sad about the whole thing.  It didn't help that Captain E threw a huge temper tantrum in which he spent a good part of the morning berating me.  It is one thing for your kid to keep yelling he "hates you".  It is something else for him to do it in ear reach of other people, hello awkward!  That kid just does not deal with disappointment or correction well at all.  At school when we had all his evaluations done they put him on the Aspergers spectrum.  Dr. J did not agree but since then we've had several serious talks where we have discussed how this very well may be a possibility, but that is a story for another day.

The story for today is that I was just on the verge of tears all day Monday and Tuesday.  Monday Jill was still here and when she got back from lunch she came and gave me a hug, at which the tears of course spilled over.  So she went and talked to Dr. J and before you knew it he was watching our overly grouchy kids and I was walking up to the hospital with her to check out the Sally Test Center.  The Sally Test Center is totally amazing and I plan to write a post entirely just about that, but I also got to tour the pediatrics ward with Sarah Ellen, chat with the pharmacy students in the medicine ward, and go with Jill to see Mo in the CCU.  It was a nice break and it was amazing to see what has been built out here and also where there is still room for growth.  When we got home Dr. J headed back to the hospital and Jill and I had a great talk and then we headed over for dinner.

Dr. J wasn't able to meet us.  Switching to peds is a little bit more time consuming and also this week has been a little bit of a heart breaker.  When Dr. J finally showed up very late to dinner Jill told him she was glad he was replacing her so that hopefully this little girl they'd been trying to get over to hospice would actually make it.  (Jill needs to get home to her practice and her hubby but I think she was having a hard time leaving patients on the ward that she hasn't been able to resolve a place or a  plan for yet).

Yesterday after a nice lunch Jill or Silly Jillie as Peach likes to call her out of love, headed off for the airport.  We were definitely sad to see her go although after Dr. J got home from the wards late again last night and told me what had happened I was so glad she left Tuesday and not Wednesday because Tuesday on the peds ward was not a good day to be there and I don't know how Jill would have pulled herself away after the day Dr. J had yesterday.

Tuesday on the Peds wards was a day of sadness.  Dr. J said before he even got to work a baby had died on the ward.  Then while he was there they had another baby die.  He said the nurse came and got him to check on two very sick babies.  He ran over and one had already stopped breathing and the heart had stopped.  He had no idea how long the baby had been down.  He started CPR but even as he was doing the compressions in his mind he kept thinking, "We only have 6 beds with vents, they are all full, I don't even know if we have a vent to fit this little tiny babe, I don't even know how long the baby had been down."  In the end the baby could not be resuscitated and all he could do was tell the family he was sorry and stay with them while they mourned for a bit before the morgue attendants came to take the baby.  There is no privacy in the ward.  This family had to morn surrounded by others.  Dr. J said some tried to help comfort them but in general people just tried to give them the little privacy they could in a room where there are eight beds, two patients per bed along with the two moms who are the primary care giver and food source of the child while in the hospital, and a variety of other family members and friends standing around.  Then Dr. J had to head over to the other baby.  This one had come in that day with a bladder infection that had turned into sepsis.  They are pushing fluids and antibiotics and we prayed for that baby multiple times last night but Dr. J said when he left the hospital he just didn't know if the baby was going to make it through the night.  What a sad beginning to the week.  I really hope that we can have an uphill climb from here.  I pray that when Dr. J gets to work this morning that baby will still be with us, that the antibiotics can work, that the baby can have full recovery and will be able to go home soon.  I pray for the two families who lost their babies yesterday that they can have peace and comfort and that they can be reunited with their lost babies someday.  I pray for the doctors at the hospital, that they can work hard, that they can have their best wits about them, that they can do the best for each of their patients, and that they can continue to have heart even when they face some pretty hard odds.  Finally I pray for the beautiful little patients and their families at the hospital that they can get the best care possible here and receive both comfort of their bodies as well as comfort of their souls.