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It’s almost 7pm on a Friday night, and here I am, all alone in my parents’ house (since the Internet in our own home hasn’t worked for months). Mom and Dad are on vacation this week, so I’m making sure the house is okay and the dog is fed. Both very difficult tasks, I assure you.
I’m not one of those people who loves being alone. I can take it for awhile, and as an introvert, I need some alone time. But it grates on my nerves after not too long. When I’ve been asked to house-sit in the States, I’ve always ended up turning on the TV while I do something else (besides watch it) just so that there’s some noise. It’s not that I don’t like silence. I just don’t like empty silence–knowing that there’s no one else around. I never feel safe. I guess that’s from spending my early childhood in Los Angeles, always worried about a thief in my closet or some crazy child-snatcher coming in through my bedroom window. And now with armed robbery so rampant in Jos, I feel less safe than ever when I’m alone at night.
This is the life of a resident’s wife; what can I say? I knew it would be like this, and I don’t for a second regret marrying a doctor.
But it sure does get lonely.
This summer has been a summer of farewells, and today is no exception.Today, Baby Elizabeth is going home! She’s been on admission for two months, and yesterday weighed 1.85 kg (4.1 lbs)! Baby Elizabeth is shown here with Dr. Dennis. She’s roly poly and has finally been weaned off oxygen. We’re all terribly excited that she’s ready to go home, but I personally will miss her. Of course, I would miss her anyway because I’m leaving today. My heart breaks, as usual, to be leaving this land I love. But sometimes farewells are necessary, and this is only for a little while. So I’ll shake hands – hugs aren’t the cultural norm – and say, “Sai na dawo” (Until I come back). For I will be back and soon. This is home.
Baby Peter died today.
I don’t even know the details. I know that he was “gasping” yesterday when the electricity went off for a half hour, and no one thought to connect his oxygen mask to the oxygen tank… And I guess he just didn’t really recover. He had three or four more apnoea attacks and finally “packed” at 16:15 today. I was at the paediatric ward but not present when Peter died. And now he’s gone.
And I remember the songs I’ve heard about babies’ deaths, including “With Hope” by Steven Curtis Chapman.
But still somehow, after having seen Baby Peter every day for the past month, a little bit of me has died with him. Still, I believe babies go to heaven, so I will say goodbye with hope.
Why do I love spending time in the paediatric ward? Because of…
Samuel!
Samuel is three years old and one of our HIV+ babies receiving anti-retroviral drugs. I met him five weeks ago when he climbed onto my lap during PEPFAR clinic. He smiled and sat happily on my lap, playing with my beeping watch, for at least twenty minutes. I wished I’d had my camera.
So the next time he popped into the paediatric clinic carrying a drum, I immediately got out my camera. After I took this snap, he sat on my lap, and we played the drum together. Whenever I stopped hitting the drum, he grabbed my hand and forced me to drum again! The child is stubborn and knows how to get what he wants with his winning smile!
I saw Samuel again on Monday. This time I scooped him up into my arms and took him around the ward, showing him the animals my aunt has been painting on the doors and walls. His favourite was the monkey, and we kept returning to the door so he could touch the monkey’s mouth. There was music on TV, so I danced around the ward, a handsome boy in my arms. The visit was short (because he was well), and his caregiver came to get him before I was ready to let go.
But I’ll never forget the day I danced with Samuel.
We visited Ahmadu on Thursday. He’d been into the paediatric clinic just the day before, and there had been a commotion over whether or not he was on course with his anti-HIV drugs. So we paid his family a visit to see for ourselves. Stephanie drove us less than ten minutes into the Muslim part of town – the wrong way down a one-way street – and we parked outside a shop. The remaining trek was along a dirt path beside a stream. There were women knee-high in the water, scooping sand from the bottom to sell. Nearby was a group of women making mud bricks. I baaed at the goats we passed, and the children watching us laughed. “You can hear his grandmother’s grinder from here,” Stephanie pointed out as we came within a few hundred meters of the house. I averted my eyes as we walked past a group of men seated outside a house. We turned a corner, and there was a young woman with Ahmadu on her hip. “Sannu! Sannu!” she greeted us and welcomed us into her tiny home. There was just enough couch space for the five of us visitors, so the rest of the household sat on the table against the far wall, and Ahmadu and his grandmother sat on the floor. Stephanie was delighted to see Ahmadu looking so well. To me he looked thin and wasted, but to her he looked like someone brought back from the dead.
“You should have seen him a few months ago,” Susan said later. “He was just skin and bones, too weak to suck or sit up or grab things. It’s a miracle what God has done for this little boy.” Ahmadu is 15 months old and fighting HIV. His grandmother cares for him, feeds him and makes sure he gets his medication. Whenever Ahmadu wasn’t in his grandmother’s arms, he began to cry. But he sat on the floor without falling over. When the grandmother placed a container of kwashpap* powder near him, he grabbed at it and tried to get a handful of powder. We laughed. Stephanie confirmed that Ahmadu was taking his medications faithfully after all, and she left him some paracetamol for the lingering fever from his malaria. We snapped some photos, prayed for the child and his family, and left – all within 15 minutes. We left with optimism about little Ahmadu and his future. He may look scrawny and sick, but this baby is growing and getting well. Let us hope the best for little Ahmadu.
*Kwashpap is a nutritional porridge given to malnourished children.
Lydia, James, and John went home today!! They each weighed at least 1.8 kg (~4 lbs) and looked great! I got to hold Lydia for the first time yesterday, and she was so tiny. Lydia’s parents are Fulani, so I can almost guarantee they won’t name her Lydia. (The Fulani are a nomadic cow-herding tribe found all over West Africa, and in Nigeria – at least – they’re predominantly Muslim. So my giving her a temporary New Testament name is quite ironic, when you think about it.)
I’ll miss my babies. But Elizabeth and Peter are still in the SCBU incubators, and I anticipate seeing them every day for a long time… unless Elizabeth’s fever (?malaria) takes her home before her mother does.
Why do I love spending time in the paediatric ward? Because of…Lydia, Elizabeth, Peter, James, and John!
The nurse laughed at me when I came in on Sunday to visit the incubator babies. The next morning, she asked me in Hausa how my children (yaranki) were. I was confused; did she think I was married and had children? She explained that she’d meant the incubator babies! I laughed and went to check on them. None of them have been named yet, so I’ve named them all in my head. Elizabeth and Peter were both 14 weeks premature and are each about 1 lb, 13 oz at two weeks old. Lydia (upper left) is about 4 lbs and should go home today!
And three-week-old James (3 lbs, 8 oz) and John (4 lbs) share an incubator (upper right). They’re two of a set of triplets, one of whom died before he was a week old. Their mom is finally feeding them herself, so they’re rapidly gaining weight. These are my babies, yarana, and they bring me joy!
Why do I love spending time in the paediatric ward? Because of…
Nehemiah!
“Your shoes are wet,” I told the little tyke who wandered into the paediatric clinic after hours today as the rain came pounding down outside. He looked at his shoes and looked at the floor behind him. “My shoes are dry,” I said. “See?” He looked at my shoes and nodded. I held out my hand, and he grabbed it; it was cold. While his mother tried to talk the doctor into examining Nehemiah, I sat, warming Nehemiah’s cold hand. He didn’t talk, and I didn’t talk, but we were friends. He nodded when I asked if I could “snap” him (take his photo). He was just so darn cute.
The doctor refused to see him today, since it was after clinic hours, so we had a short visit. As Nehemiah walked out, I said goodbye, and he finally spoke.
“Bye!” he called behind him as he hurried after his mom.
I look forward to seeing him again tomorrow!
It was 10:30AM before Susan, an American nurse, was ready for the home visit. She put on her headtie, and we were off, led by two Nigerian women, Theresa and Ladi. We crossed the street from the hospital gate – which is in itself an ordeal – and hailed a taxi. (In other words, Ladi stuck her head into a parked car and asked the driver if he’d take us where we wanted to go. He agreed.) So we all four piled in and were on our way.
We didn’t travel far, but too far to walk. When the asphalt road ended, the taxi driver turned around and refused to go any further. We all scrambled out and started the short trek. Susan greeted everyone we passed, especially the children: “Yara, sannu ku!” The kids were all delighted and happily answered the greeting. Goats wandered across our path, bleating mournfully.
Ladi took us to the house of a woman named Miriam (not her real name). Miriam’s aunt met us at the door and welcomed us warmly. She ushered us into a bedroom and sat us on stools and the floor. Only after I sat did I notice Miriam, an emaciated woman lying across the lap of her mother. Everyone around me broke into Hausa, and I lost the conversation.
Hollow eyes. I now understand the term. Miriam – who could not have been more than thirty – was a human scarecrow, so weak she could not speak or lift a finger. Her arms and legs were just skin stretched over bone, her face drawn and pale, the eyes of a wraith. When Susan gave her a sip of water, Miriam could not swallow it. Instead, it came out her nose and dribbled out of her mouth. Susan explained to the mother that Miriam should be turned every few hours to prevent her getting bedsores.
Theresa quietly told me some of Miriam’s background: Miriam was divorced with two children. Her brother and sister-in-law had recently died of AIDS, and their mother was now taking care of all the children. Miriam’s aunt showed us a recent photo of Miriam and her mother, and I gasped. The woman pictured had long hair and a full figure – and a smile. There was almost no resemblance to the woman lying before me. Theresa told me that Miriam, who’d tested HIV+ only six months earlier, had come to the hospital a month before our visit with fever and vomiting. The doctor discharged her after two weeks on admission. (Because they could no longer afford it? I wondered.) Theresa was shocked at how quickly Miriam had deteriorated in the two weeks since her discharge.
All the women in the house covered their heads, and Ladi prayed for Miriam in Hausa. Afterward, we sang to Miriam, first in Hausa, then in English. I tried to pick it up as we sang: “I will go with Jesus, wherever he leads. The road will not be easy, but I will go with Jesus, wherever he leads.” Miriam’s lips moved as we began the song, but only slightly and briefly as her strength failed.
Susan gave a few last medical suggestions, and we got up. In the next room, Susan told Miriam’s relatives she would die in the next few days, so they should encourage her and remind her that Jesus was with her. Miriam’s mother and aunt walked us out and down the road a little ways. Finally, we bade goodbye and God bless you to the women, and went on our way.
“She may not even live through the night,” Susan said, “and we cannot save her life with medicine. But at least we know we talked to her and encouraged her not to be afraid of death because she dies with Jesus.” She was right; I knew it in my head. But my heart didn’t understand. We walked along the dirt road, and I was silent.
When we returned home, I expressed myself to Susan, who told me something another missionary had said to encourage her:
“I would rather love deeply and become scarred when my loved ones die, than not love at all and go through life unmarked. I don’t want to live a safe life. I want to step out and love people, even when it hurts.”
After Susan left, I tried to write in my journal about our visit with Miriam, but I found I could not.
A few days later, I heard that Miriam died that same day, only eight hours after we were there. I wasn’t surprised. In this place I have often seen death, and Miriam was not far from it when I saw her. Susan was right: There was nothing we could have done to save Miriam’s life. But we were hardly helpless. We did what we could to ensure that Miriam would die in Jesus’ arms. Sometimes that’s all we can do.
I just got here two weeks ago, and I’m already saying goodbye. I’m a missionary kid and a pilgrim. I learned to say goodbye almost before I learned hello. You would think it gets easier.It doesn’t.
Four of my doctor friends are moving away this week, and I’m already starting to say goodbye to them. This afternoon I attended a “send-forth” for the doctor friend I’ve known the longest (pictured with me above). I was only there a half hour, and yet it was still a struggle not to cry. The rest of the week will mean saying goodbye to the others – not just a spoken farewell, but the unspoken: realising this is the last time I’ll go on rounds with Dr. So-and-so, the last time I’ll be on call with Dr. Such-and-such, the last time I’ll hear them laugh. The Last.
No, saying goodbye doesn’t get easier. At least, with the assurance of heaven, it’s only goodbye for a little while…Thank God for that.
