New Year.... new challenges.....

A new year, what will it brings us??? We welcomed the new year yesterday with a nice meal. But we already start the year with challenges... We have not so many children, and during the last 2 weeks we did not get many new children. I am glad about that, we have half of the team on vacation, the staff goes to the villages to celebrate Christmas or New year with their relatives.

We don't have many children, but we do have some very sick children.......

Anna Grace, she is still not doing well. If I see pictures from the time that she just came.... she looked much better than now.. We try, but she is just not picking up.... we need a miracle for her. Yesterday we had to put her again on IV fluids, she was dehydrated....

Baby Benjamin, he is 3,5 months old. His mother was "on the road" and asked some people if she could rest a bit on their veranda. and she gave birth there..... They brought her to the health centre, but she escaped, leaving the baby behind. And now the baby is with us and after one month the baby got convulsions, without a reason. We have been to several doctors, they did a Lumbar Punction twice, and that is painful... now we are advised to go for a CT scan, we have to go to another city to do that, it is not possible in Soroti. We are planning to that his week. But yesterday he was in a lot of pain, it is so sad.....

Abraham got suddenly severe convulsions, was even unconscious for a while. After a Lumbar Punction we got the diagnosis: A certain meningitis, which comes more often in HIV+ people. The treatment is 8 hours on IV medication every day, for 2 weeks. In the beginning he was really confused and saw scary things, now he is doing so much better. I am so proud of him, the way that he  is handling the IV every day, he is so patient. Two more days to go.....

Friday John Peter was brought into Amecet. He is 14 years old and his weight is 18 kg. Very malnourished and also sick and he has anemia and is HIV+. He is very sad, doesn't talk. yesterday he had a lot of pain in his stomach. He was crying of pain. We took him to the doctor and we had to give him pain medication. Today we went back again and we got anti TB medication and he needed blood transfusion. So we made our living room into a hospital room....

At the right Abraham is on his IV medication, he is smiling and cheerful, at the left John Peter is on his blood transfusion. Not so happy, but at least he didn't have much pain. We pray and hope that the medicines will help him and that he gets some of his strength back.

Then we still have Baby Esther, I wrote about her in my last blog. We have quite a number of children where we have worries about......

Please stand with us in prayers, that God will have mercy on them and that He will give the doctors and also us, wisdom....