Today, a little boy died. He had been sick for the last few days, but he and his family had been hiding in the bush due to fighting near their home. Finally yesterday, he was able to get to a health clinic. The health clinic referred him to us, along with his mother who was in early labour with her 9th child.
By the time he reached us his tongue was white with lack of blood, malaria parasites swarmed in his blood, his hands and feet were puffy due to malnourishment and he was gasping for breath. We gave him a couple of blood transfusions, our strongest antimalarials, oxygen and other fluids and treatment: everything we could possibly do.
But today he still died.
While he was dying, his mother lay in a bed in the adjoining ward. We performed a C-section on her early this morning as her baby was lying sideways. She lost a lot of blood but she and her new son should do okay. The relatives have not told her yet that her other son has died. They told us they are afraid her wound will break open if they tell her now.
The other day I heard the English word “impossible” translated into Juba Arabic as “something for which there is no medicine”.
There seems to be a lot of that around.
Our medicine was not strong enough for this little boy to live. And once his heart had stopped beating there was no medicine that could bring him back. There is no medicine that will stop this mother’s heart breaking, even if we can stop her abdomen from doing so. There is no medicine that can make the fighting stop and enable people to return to their homes and live life.
And I hate it.
I like nice tidy diagnoses for which you can give just the right medicine and then the patient is cured. I like being able to see an issue and be able to do exactly what is needed to resolve. I like happy endings where everything is tied up neatly together.
But, that is not our world. Our world is full of impossibilities; of pharmacies that do not have the right medicines for our particular ailments.
But, thankfully, this world where two year old boys die because they could not get to a clinic because of fighting between different tribes is not our only reality.
This world was created with limits, it was allowed to stay broken in need of medicine, so that we would long for the day when the broken will be gloriously repaired, so that we would seek out the medicine that we desperately need, so that we would marvel at the one for whom nothing is too difficult.
Life Down the Rutted Red Road 