SAVING A LIFE
I received a phone call at about 7pm from our missionary nurse, to come and evaluate a woman who was said to be in labor. When I realized who the patient was, I felt reluctant in going, knowing this was a woman who defied all our efforts, in getting her to attend our free antenatal care clinic, in spite of her bad obstetric history. While I was going, my wife suggested that I carry the generator we use at home along (the one in the hospital had fault), but I told her that torchlight will do since I am only going to evaluate the situation and most likely refer her. My heart leaped at the door of the clinic when I heard the voice of our nurse, “Doctor its breech!” I ran to fix my gloves as I saw the bluish legs hanging there. We were trying to resuscitate the baby when I discovered we were actually dealing with twins! The babies were premature with a weight of 1.6kg each. I left the clinic at about 11pm after trying hard to get the family’s cooperation to take the babies to UITH for intensive neonatal care. They agreed but complained that they had no money on them to pay for our service, and of course to finance the referral. Early the next morning, I was with the family to take the babies to the Teaching Hospital in my car, and to take full responsibility of the financial burden, with the support of The Kingdom Projects. Unfortunately, the 2nd twin died in the early hours of the day. I was dazed beyond description when the family refused our offer of help for the surviving baby, even without any financial input from them! You will know the weight of this story better with the understanding that this same woman had lost 3 set of twins and a set of triplets! We are in the triplet’s story as we took the delivery at home. The babies were premature, and all our effort to help them live proved abortive as we did not get the cooperation of the family. The last baby died about 2 weeks after delivery. The relatives are the major decision maker for this family because both the husband and wife have some degree of mental retardation. One wonders if anyone in the village cares about their plight. We initially explored the possibilities of whatever legal action available to save the life of the surviving baby, but realized that the process may be too slow thereby loosing the baby in the process. Of what use is the action if the baby does not survive? So we decided to do anything in our power to save the baby's life right there in the village. This we did and to God's glory the baby is more than 9 month old as of the time of this writing, and doing wonderfully well
I received a phone call at about 7pm from our missionary nurse, to come and evaluate a woman who was said to be in labor. When I realized who the patient was, I felt reluctant in going, knowing this was a woman who defied all our efforts, in getting her to attend our free antenatal care clinic, in spite of her bad obstetric history. While I was going, my wife suggested that I carry the generator we use at home along (the one in the hospital had fault), but I told her that torchlight will do since I am only going to evaluate the situation and most likely refer her. My heart leaped at the door of the clinic when I heard the voice of our nurse, “Doctor its breech!” I ran to fix my gloves as I saw the bluish legs hanging there. We were trying to resuscitate the baby when I discovered we were actually dealing with twins! The babies were premature with a weight of 1.6kg each. I left the clinic at about 11pm after trying hard to get the family’s cooperation to take the babies to UITH for intensive neonatal care. They agreed but complained that they had no money on them to pay for our service, and of course to finance the referral. Early the next morning, I was with the family to take the babies to the Teaching Hospital in my car, and to take full responsibility of the financial burden, with the support of The Kingdom Projects. Unfortunately, the 2nd twin died in the early hours of the day. I was dazed beyond description when the family refused our offer of help for the surviving baby, even without any financial input from them! You will know the weight of this story better with the understanding that this same woman had lost 3 set of twins and a set of triplets! We are in the triplet’s story as we took the delivery at home. The babies were premature, and all our effort to help them live proved abortive as we did not get the cooperation of the family. The last baby died about 2 weeks after delivery. The relatives are the major decision maker for this family because both the husband and wife have some degree of mental retardation. One wonders if anyone in the village cares about their plight. We initially explored the possibilities of whatever legal action available to save the life of the surviving baby, but realized that the process may be too slow thereby loosing the baby in the process. Of what use is the action if the baby does not survive? So we decided to do anything in our power to save the baby's life right there in the village. This we did and to God's glory the baby is more than 9 month old as of the time of this writing, and doing wonderfully well
Organizations related to this story:
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