Miracles and Medicine!!!

This past week I have been reminded that Amecet is a very special children’s home and we have the ability to care for children in extraordinary ways!!! Yes working with HIV positive children in Africa you expect illness and we’re often treating fevers and making trips to the clinic for malaria tests, however the house (well at least the medicine room) now looks more like a hospital than ever!!!



Evalyn trying to drink from a bottle
but she was to weak

I can’t even tell you how it all started the last week has become a bit of a blurr, so I guess well just start with the smallest! Amecet not only takes in HIV positive children but also babies who have lost their mothers, last saturday Els came bac from the hospital with the tiniest baby I had ever seen (at that point) Evalyn was born at 7months and was already 10days old, her mother has pre-eclampsia and so the birth was enduced to save the life of the mother, fortunately both mother and child survived the birth however the mother was paralysed down one side along with many other illnesses and was sitting in the ward on the floor, the baby being held by her 10 year old sister. Evalyn came into out incubator and I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time to learn how to feed her. She has a feeding tube that goes through her nose into her stomac and we push milk straight into her tummy by syringe, this quite simple task can go terribly wrong if the tube is in the lungs or you push the milk in too quickly so each staff member is being trained and until more people know how this is a time consuming job.

Putting a feeding tube into Eunice

Since I’ve been at Amecet babies have been like busses we have no new ones for a while and then they arrive in pairs, and this was no exception a  few days later our second prem baby of my stay arrived, Eunice, also born at 7months and 2 weeks old, her mother was in a coma and died just 2 days after Eunice came to us, Eunice started out well and was even able to suck from a bottle however this made her tired and she too went on a feeding tube, A few days later Eunice started having problems with her gut and went from one extreme to the other, currently her dihorrea is so bad she is dehydrated and is being fed ever hour milk or rehydration fluids. She was taken for an IV however after it taking almost 15 attempts to get it in and then only staying right for 45 minuets we had to give up on that for today, her veins are so so small that the IV isn’t taking, tomorrow maybe we’ll try something different and for tonight we’re praying she stays strong and keeps her fluids.

Jesse's first meal at Amecet

Eunice wasn’t the last arrival either, bus number 3 arrived Thursday, another premature baby, born at 6 months and a couple of weeks old, his single mother seemed ignorant to the severity of Jesse’s condition at only 20 years old she hadn’t been aware of the abnormality of how small and weak  he was. Jesse weighed only 780grams (1.7lbs) when he arrived and he was almost starved to death as he was too weak to drink. In 3 days with an IV and a feeding tube he made it to a Kilo, still very small but going in the right direction! I was given the challenge/privilege/scary job of feeding Jesse for the first time through the tube, my hands were literally shaking but he took the milk really well so all is good!!!!

It is amazing babies are alive, they are 3 liiving miracles and each day as they gain strenght all we can do is be thankful that God protceted them untill they came to us, and feel so blessed that we have the opportunity to help them!

All this drama is exciting, scary and sure does keep us busy feeding the premmys (or peanuts) is almost an ongoing job but they really are fighters!!! Still while all this is going on the rest of the house is not immue to sickness!!!
Today rather than taking the children to the doctor, the doctor came to Amecet (luckily the clinic is right next door, we eben have a connecting gate!!) Mary, Musa, Rose, Sarah, Norah and Levi have all come down with Malaria in the last 2 weeks, last Sunday we had 3 children on IVs because of the dehydration the Malaria had caused, Rose made the start of my night shift fun by vomiting up her dinner all over the living room for the second night in a row, she continued to throw up after meals and now has dihorrea. Musa is in a bad way right now, he vomited on me when we went for a Malaria test and I’ve had to clean up pooop galore from him the last 2 days! He has dehydration and is just so weak a boy that would polish off 200mls in a matter of mins only drinking 40 you know something isn’t right and after a few weeks of this and 2 treatments of malaria we’re worried about him, he doesn’t seem to be getting better we can only pray his new medicines work!

As well as the malaria’s baby Benna is also suffering, and has dihorrea and is lethargic and weak, Abai, Mary and Charles have all had fevers, pains, some of the girls have bad coughs and I forget how many children are on antibiotics!!!

I also wish I had time to tell you about our adventures to the villages yesterday however I’m gonna let Els do that, check out Amecets blog: http://amecet-soroti.blogspot.com/

Once again i'm sure i've forgotten to tell you so much stuff, maybe i need to write more often, then my posts wouldn't be so long!!! And please continue to pray for all of our children and al the aunties who are dedicated to okoing after them!