Tears and laughter....

Maybe some of you have read the blogs about the 3,5 year old Gloria, their title is: "These legs are made for walking". We took Gloria back in Amecet, because her grandmother did not put her splint on her leg. We went with her to doctors, had splints made, which were a disaster, she cried so much with them and she got wounds on her heels. Then the doctor put plaster on both of her legs and she had that for four weeks. Then we had to massage her legs, but we did not see any improvement. The only improvement was that Glory got more active and started to crawl, she even tries to pull herself up and stand on her legs for a minute, holding the table. This week we went back again to the doctor, he send us to a physiotherapist (the only one in Soroti). There we heard the awful news that Gloria has a brain damage and that she will never walk. She has her legs in a "scissor position" and when we put on plaster or splints, as soon as we remove them, it will be back in that position. I had tears in my eyes, while the man was talking, Gloria is an orphan and is HIV+ , who will carry her around when she is 20 years??? I was so sad, what future is there for this little girl? We went back to the doctor, quiet and sad, the doctor agreed with the opinion of the physiotherapist, but he said, she might walk. Practise with her with the walker, massage her legs and don't give up. He saw how down disappointed we were. He had one patient like Gloria, he walks now, sometimes he falls over, but he goes up and walks again. So now we started with the walker, she does walk a bit, on her funny feet, we praise her and clap for her and she really feels special then. I don't know what the future may bring for Gloria, we pray God for a miracle and in the meantime....... we don't give up and we practise and we clap for her!!!!

Today we got happy news. We had gone in the last months with three children for a HIV- DNA test. This test is done on baby's, to see if there is any HIV virus in their blood. From the three children whose picture you see below, two of them lost their mother shortly after they were born. And their mothers were HIV+ . The baby's received ARV medicines after their birth, but there is still a chance that they got infected by the HIV virus. The third child's mother was probably HIV+, so we also did a DNA test on him. But today we got the happy news that they are all three HIV NEGATIVE!!!!! We are very happy for them, it will be such a good news to their families! We are thankful that we can laugh with those three baby's, who have now so much more chance for a better future!!