Fedo - A Father's Day Prayer

He is said to be six months old, but this embattled angel behaves like a much older infant.

He arrived on Tuesday of last week, swollen from from protein-energy malnutrition, with a cough, fever, diarrhoea and a severe case of thrush in his mouth. He wouldn't drink - not milk, not juice or oral re-hydration solution. not from a bottle, a cup or a syringe. I remember arguing half-heatedly with the head Haitian nurse. She knew, that I knew, the baby needed an NG tube, she told me. I did know that, but I still didn't want to put the tube down. Fedo was an older infant. It is painful and distressing to have an NG tube passed. Fedo would fight. Still, he was dehydrated and we could not allow his condition to deteriorate under our care.

Re-signed, and with the tube in my hand, I explained to Fedo in a gentle voice, what I was going to do, and why. He put his hand up in front of mine. The gesture and the facial expression that accompanied it communicated his feelings on the matter very clearly. Stop right there Madam! I am not ok with this! The NICU staff were as surprised as I was. Maybe Fedo was considerably older than six months. Maybe he has just experienced too much in his 6 short months in this world. Maybe he knows too much.

Fedo came during an exceptionally busy week, during which, at one point, the orphanage's Intensive Care room was full to bursting with 15 babies, many of them sick, and a three year old in heart failure. Fedo received a continuous feed, electrolytes, medications and vitamins through his NG tube. By Thursday, his swelling was going down and his infections were clearing up. On Friday, he began sucking from a bottle and smiling. I was thrilled to see this fragile baby healing so quickly. Kwashiorkor malnutrition causes swelling of the tissues, wasting, severe immune-deficiency due to low protein levels in the blood and many together with nutritional deficiencies. Fedo though, was on the path to recovery.

Despite these hopeful signs, Fedo experienced a life-threatening complication related to his malnutrition today. Our orphanage Director checked in on the NICU babies after lunch and found Fedo extremely ill. While she was starting an IV on him, he went into shock and developed severe breathing problems.

It seems as though the tissue wasting that has resulted from extreme malnourishment has affected Fedo's intestines. He developed a high fever and suffered a  gastro-intestinal bleed this afternoon. When I arrived in the NICU, he was unconscious, unresponsive, extremely pale and in such severe shock that we could not detect a pulse.

For over an hour, we worked hard to stabilise him with IV fluids, oxygen and antibiotics. Dixie, the orphanage Director, performed as ice-water lavage to slow the bleeding. As we worked, we prayed, against the terrible fear that Fedo might die in front of us. We advocated hard for this orphaned child, for a healing, preferably in this world, according to your perfect will, Lord

At the time of writing this post, Fedo is in a serious but stable condition. He re-gained consciousness this evening and turned to my voice. His gaze was searching, pained and confused. What is happening to me? Please explain it Miss Susan. In all my life, nothing as terrible as this has ever happened!

We ask that you echo our prayers for Fedo tonight. Our God is the Father of the fatherless. He is Fedo's Daddy and the great physician and I have great confidence in his infinite love and concern for his stricken infant son. Imagine his anguish as he watched his helpless baby suffer. I am thankful to his birth Father, for seeking help and I am hopeful that for Fedo, help has not come too late. Although I recognise that Fedo couldn't be in better hands than in his heavenly father's. I am so, so sorry that his earthly father doesn't have his son in his arms. Today is Fathers Day. No Father should be forced to make the impossibly difficult decision, to give up a child in order to save them.

Rebecca - Not 'Forgotten'

It seems that something about my shock startled Rebecca's mother out of her cold indifference. Minutes after I announced that Rebecca didn't need her mothers milk, not if her feelings about the baby were so intensely negative, not if our continuing to press for milk was increasing her sense of hostility, the teenage mother sighed and began expressing. She continued to provide milk over the days that followed.

Rebecca, who was born significantly premature and malnourished. Rebecca, who was struggling with a severe viral infection. Rebecca, who had difficulty digesting her feeds. Rebecca, who was so highly stressed that she was producing excess stomach acid and vomiting streaks of fresh blood. Rebecca, who had been delivered in a latrine bucket. Rebecca, the child of a broken mother, with a calloused heart. This Rebecca. with so many odds stacked against her, began to heal and to thrive. 

Rebecca now weighs 2lb 9.5 oz. I have struggled with this tiny, fragile infant. Twice, I weaned her from her CPAP, only for her to become ill with bronchilolitis, then a simple cold, and need more CPAP support than ever before. On the third attempt, I was finally able to get Rebecca off of CPAP and onto a nasal cannula. A constant flow of compressed air and daily caffeine ensure that she continues to breath. 

When I worked in Scotland, it was exceptional for a newborn with bronchiolitis not to need mechanical ventilation. During the long course of Rebecca's recovery, I have learnt a lot about the potential of bubble CPAP, and about it's capacity to save the lives of tiny infants, born in Haiti and in other countries that don't have the personnel or the resources to place them on mechanical ventilators. I sincerely hope that more Doctors and nurses working in hospitals and clinics in the developing world will catch on to the bubble CPAP principle.

Of course, Rebecca is the child that God has placed in front of us, so please continue to pray for her and for her Mother. Pray for continued healing in Rebecca's body, and for her mother's wounded heart. I really believe that all women are called by God to a mothering role; to love sacrificially and to nurture his children. I think that Rebecca's mother denied this part of her nature because she was badly hurt, and overwhelmed - afraid that tenderness would drain her, open her up, and increase her vulnerability. She is now showing concern for her baby and for our other NICU infants. This softening of her heart tells us that our prayers have been heard and that God's hand is on both of his children, the mother and the daughter. He is with them and in them, whether or not they know it, and because of that, Rebecca's mother can not 'forget' her.

'Can a mother' forget the baby at her breast

  and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
 I will not forget you!' Isaiah 49:15

Far From Eden

I believe that their Father God intended them for Eden; a place where the soil was rich and the earth produced bountifully. A place in which they would be safe and nurtured into adulthood and all the days of their lives. Docillia, Shamira and Dabbens though, were born far from Eden.

Last Thursday, at the end of a long day, Haitian social services closed an orphanage in Kenscoff on the grounds that the children there were severely neglected. GLA was asked to provide emergency care for 15 sick babies. At 5pm, I watched from the NICU balcony, as social workers and GLA staff lead 23 children to the common room. The nannies and I counted 1 baby and 2 toddlers. The other children in the group appeared to range from 3-8 years old. Where would we put all of these children, with both houses so crowded?

Downstairs, I assessed the children medically, while others confirmed the identity of each child, photographed them and attached name bands to their wrists. Having received three critically ill, children from this orphanage in 2010, I was aware of the conditions the children would be coming from and I was fully prepared to set up a make-shift hospital ward. I had been praying for these children ever since my precious Geraldine had returned to that house of horrors. I scanned the room looking for her. To my dismay, she was not there.

Most of the children were malnourished, with red hair, spindly arms and bloated bellies.  Two were suffering from protein-energy malnutrition. Several had coughs and fevers. One little boy had healing wounds on his toes that he told me were from rat bites. A few had minor skin infections.  The youngest child, an 8lb baby who we were told was 4 months old was emaciated, severely dehydrated and suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting. He was the only child that needed urgent medical care.

Three of the 23 children have been admitted to the nurseries at the main house.  They are the smallest and frailest children. All three have infections, all are malnourished and all are responding well to special formula milk, plumpy nut and antibiotics. The wounds on the inside though, will be more difficult to heal.

Dabbens has only just began to trust that  there is no need to feed until he is overly full. The day after his admission. he was a fractious baby, with a hungry, desperate cry, who, pulled at his hair and chewed his fist. We would stop feeding him after a few ounces of formula so that we could burp him and he would kick and thrash and arch his back and look at us with pained confusion. The orphanage closure occurred just in time to save his life, but it came a month too late for his dead twin.

Docillia (shown on the left) is three years old and has only just learnt to walk. She is full of smiles and she chatters away with the nurses and nannies. Foreigners who used to visit her orphanage were amazed to see the transformation in her after 24 hours at GLA. We are told that they didn't know she could talk, and that they have never seen her smile before. They have known her for 18 months.

Shamira - We were told that she was 8 months old, but I counted 18 teeth in her mouth, and I suspect that she is at least two years old. Shamira is shy and a little bit withdrawn. She is willing, with trepidation dancing behind  veiled eyes, to accept our care and our tenderness. She can't place her confidence in us yet. Her urgent wails last Friday as she watched me give parasite medication, mixed with yogurt to Docillia, convinced me that at her last orphanage, some children got food when it was served, not all.

On Friday morning, as I spooned medical peanut butter, specially formulated for malnourished children into a bowl, and began spoon-feeding it to each girl, they exchanged impish, slightly bemused looks. Peanut butter from a spoon - has this lady lost her senses? Shamira seemed to inquire. Raising her eyebrows, Docillia responded with an expression that said, probably, but lets just go with it! In their minds, they had hit the jackpot.

Make no mistake, these are wounded children. Their early life-experiences have taught them that adults are inconsistent and untrustworthy and that they themselves are not deserving of basic care and protection. Not special. Not noticed. Not seen.

Part of the treatment here will be warmth, cuddle-time and lots of positive interaction with adults. You see, we can give these hurting babies all the food they want, and the best medicines,  but without gentle loving care, without touch and physical contact from their caregivers, there will not grow, they will not heal, and they will not thrive developmentally. Apparently, on some primal level, a life without love is a life not worth living.

The nannies and I believe without reservation that each of these little ones are precious to God. Knowing this, we feel privileged to tend to them. To comfort them. To relieve their suffering. To salvage their lives. We have no idea how long Dabbens, Shamira and Docillia will be with us. Will Social Services track down their parents in a weeks time or in a months time? Will the children be declared abandoned in 6 months time and eventually be adopted?

I don't know, and so I feel the same urgent need I felt with Geraldine, to strengthen and heal their bodies and sooth their hurting hearts as fast and as well as we possibly can. Meanwhile, I pray for the solution that will be most conducive to their long-term well-being.

God knows better than I do, what that solution is, in this place, so far east of Eden.

Jackson and Judeson: A Prayer for Motherless Children

They arrived last Saturday night, in the arms of an Aunt and Uncle, who each rocked one of their newly born nephews. With glazed eyes, the infants' relatives shared the boys tragic story: they had set off from their remote mountain village that morning with the twins. The labour had progressed without event, but immediately following the birth of the second twin, the mother, a healthy 32 year old woman, took a deep breath. It would be her last. The mother was dead. They family could not explain it.

Jackson and Judeson weighed 4lb 8.5oz and 5lb 1oz on arrival to the nursery. They hadn't been fed since birth. Both were slightly cool. Judeson's blood sugar was dropping, and Jackson, the smaller twin, had a very. very low blood sugar. We warmed the boys and gave them sugar water, followed by a bottle of warm milk. Jackson was too sleepy to suck and was having mild breathing problems, so he received a feed through a tube, and was placed on a modified bubble CPAP system for a day.

It is obvious looking at them, that these boys are identical. The only way to tell them apart is the difference in size and skin colour -  each boy goes through different shades of yellow, as they overcome jaundice. It is special to have identical twins in the nursery. This is the first set of identical twins we have had at GLA in several years. Since they shared not just a womb, but an amniotic sack, the boys are bed-sharing for now. Everyone agreed that was appropriate. For the Haitian staff, their sense of wonder about these beautiful babies has increased  due to an anomaly that, being identical, they share. Each boy has 12 fingers, instead of 10.

Did that mean that they had a triplet?

'Why, yes, Susan! You're so smart!' one nanny exclaimed. Haitians believe that polydactaly (having extra fingers) is a sign that a pregnancy started as a twin pregnancy (in this case it was a triplet pregnancy, so they believe.) The babies engage in a fight in utero, that ends with one twin consuming the other. As a sign to the parents and family members or this battle and it's outcome, the victorious twin gains extra fingers from the vanquished twin.

In a country in which infant mortality is very high, these extra fingers provide reassurance to the family. The child in their arms is strong. He or she has already proven that. The family experiences a feeling of pride, and increased confidence that their tiny baby might survive.

Despite this reassurance, the Haitian staff were very concerned when they started work on Friday morning. The were severely dehydrated. The nursing notes read that they had fed well. There was no mention of diarrhoea or vomiting, but we soon learned that diarrhoea and vomiting is just what they had. Judeson, the largest twin was the sickest. His weight was down 12% from the previous day. His brother had lost 10% of his body weight. I had to start IV's on both of them.

As I re-sited one of those lines this morning, I felt a twinge of sadness. The boys mother had been healthy. She had safely delivered two infants into the world, despite the odds. Despite poverty and lack of prenatal care and despite not having a skilled birth attendant present during her labour. If she had survived, she would have nursed the boys, but she was not given the chance to do that. Now she was dead and the boys were orphans. They were also very sick.

I know, of course, that God can redeem the loss for Jackson and Judeson, and of course, I am going to ask you to pray for them, and all my sick, motherless children on this Haitian Mothers Day. The twins mother made the ultimate sacrifice for her sons last week. It was a sacrifice that cost her her life. I have to believe that her legacy of love will live on in them.

Rebeca

It has been a busy weekend, with 5 very sick babies - 4 of them being tiny infants in GLA's NICU. For now, let me tell you about one of them. Let me tell you about Rebeca:

I was recovering from my surgery when she arrived. Rebeca was  born around 2 months prematurely, and she weighed a mere 892g (1lb and 15 oz.) She was  barely breathing when she arrived, with a pulse oxygen level of 37% and a falling heart rate. She needed immediate resuscitation and careful post resuscitation care on the night she arrived. Since then, her NICU stay has been anything but smooth. She has been resuscitated no less than seven times. In addition to many of the usual problems that premature babies face, including immature lungs, an immature brain and digestive problems, Rebeca has a chest wall deformity known as Pectus Excavatum, which, is a depression in the sternum, or breast bone. Hers is fairly wide defect, and I suspect it presses on her lungs.  Our poor baby contracted a respiratory virus that caused bronchiolitis, a condition that is often fatal in premature infants and newborns. This was further complicated by pneumonia and by fluid overload (the result of an IV infusion that was not monitored in my absence (officially, I was still out of action).  Rebecca didn't gain weight when she was ill, and as a result, she remains very weak, and is still on CPAP, over two weeks after we admitted her.

Last week, her mother suddenly left the orphanage for several days. Rebeca was producing lots of stomach acid at that point, and did not tolerate the switch to formula feedings very well. I was so relieved to see her mother return on Friday. I greeted her and asked her, please to express some breastmilk right away. The Mothers eyes darkened and she stormed away from me, returning 30 minutes later with a very small volume of milk.

That night, she refused to express at all. Saturday morning, we re-iterated that Rebeca had digestive problems that could be helped by her mother's milk and that could worsen on formula milk. The Haitian nurses and I emphasised that breast milk was recommended for all small babies, and that it was especially important for premature babies, far superior than anything that can be bought in stores anywhere in the world.

The nannies did all the things for this mother than Haitians believe will enhance milk production in lactating women. They made special meals for Rebeca's mother and encouraged her to rest and take care of herself. Still, Rebecca's mother was adamant, she had no milk, and she wasn't prepared to sit for 10 minutes at regular intervals throughout the day to re-establish the excellent supply that she'd had before she went home.

We were exasperated by 7pm that night! Rebeca's mother is in very good health. She is tall by Haitian standards, she is fat and she is eating us out of house and home. We had asked nothing from her, except breast milk for the baby. Did she really want us to give formula, knowing this could compromise her daughter's frail health?

We encouraged, we coaxed, we cajoled, we reasoned, and then came some tough talk.

'She's not my responsibility,' Rebecca's mother exclaimed sullenly. 'You're telling me that because I gave birth to her, I have to produce milk for her? It was God who decided to give her to me!'
'No', we told her. 'You have made choices, now you are a mother.'
But the words were not striking the mark. We were faced with a hostile teenager, with empty eyes, who sneered, and outright refused to express milk for her baby. The milk she said wasn't there. The milk that hit staff members three feet away, whenever she squeezed her nipple.We softened the approach.

'The baby is hungry. Look at her flailing her arms. And because she's crying, her oxygen levels are going down. You've been through a lot to get help for her. We've been through a lot. She's still sick. We know you want her to live. And clearly, the baby has a strong will to live...'

Miss Cammi was cut off abruptly. 'A will to live?' the mother said, spitting the words out of her mouth as though they were something foul.'Well, I don't know why she wants to live! I delivered her in my toilet bucket!'

I was stunned motionless and  defeated. And it wasn't the words, it was they way they were spoken. Not just the fact that the baby was born in a toilet, that happens sometimes. But it was the disregard for this beautiful and precious soul. The tiny life in the incubator, in the corner of the NICU.

I turned to the Haitian staff. Maybe this baby didn't need her mothers milk as badly as we thought. Too much bittterness. Too much hatred and resentment.

Today is Haitian Mothers day. Mothers Day is supposed to be a celebration and  rightly so, because all mothers make sacrifices, and a loving mother is a golden thing. Today, though, i am painfully aware, that motherhood does not come to all women by choice. For some, mothering is a struggle, and the mantle of motherhood, a very heavy burden.

'

Awake and Alive!

 The anaesthetist called my name. I snapped awake, and was almost instantly aware of a gurgling sound, then the sense of my breath being sucked out of me. I froze. I remember coughing and gagging as the tube was removed and then the bitter taste of bile in my mouth. Then, in Kreyol, 'Ok, ok, a new gown.'

As they changed me, I felt a deep ache low on my right side, and I heard my surgeon reassuring me that it was all over, but that the appendix had ruptured. 'You don't feel any pain, do you?'

'Oui'. I did

Immediately, I was given pain medications in my IV line. As the medication was being injected, I began to shake violently.

'What's the matter?' a voice enquired

In my grogginess, I answered in English, through chattering teeth. The voice didn't understand. 'Pardon?'

'Fwet! Fwet! Fwet!' I answered. (Cold! Cold! Cold!) 

'Ok!' The voice was a friendly one. Blankets were piled on top of me and the shaking stopped. 

I was so glad that I spoke and understood Kreyol. Although my Doctors spoke excellent English, the hospital nurses spoke none at all. It would have been a very frightening and bewildering hospitalisation without a very good knowledge of Kreyol. My language abilities failed me only once during that hospitalisation:

Through in the recovery room, I continually fell into such a deep sleep that I would stop breathing. The pulse oximiter would startle me awake as my oxygen levels dropped.  'Are you ok, my dear?'a nurse asked, coming to the head of my bed. 'I keep losing my breath I answered.' Her forehead creased into a frown. Try as I might, I could not think how to say, 'I just keep forgetting to breath', in either English or Kreyol!

There were tears. I had been under anaesthetic for three hours, but anaesthetised people, however long they have been out, wake up feeling as though only a second has passed. As a result, the terror I'd felt in the minutes before I went under, was still fresh in my mind. 'I was so scared,' I kept saying. Crying hurt my stomach, so I just had to stop,  not an easy thing to do, with such strong emotions swirling inside me.

 I had been frightened but I had received competent care from the people in the operating room, within the technological limitations they were working under, and my God had guided the hands of my surgeon, all the while, holding me in the palm of his own hand. And I was alive! My Grandfather had died, almost as far away from home as I was now, and in this third world country, I was awake, and aware post surgery, and for the first time in two days, it seemed possible that I might live.

Around the time that James Westwood died, his best friend, a man who was almost closer than a brother to him, had a terrible nightmare, in which my Grand-father was torn away from him, screaming and wild eyed, and left alone on a remote beach. James had suffered the same pain and the same isolation and the same terror in the same state of loneliness that I had. For me, though, the last goodbye I had said to family and friends as I headed back to Haiti after the Christmas holidays wouldn't be forever. I would see them again in this world. I was so grateful for this. So grateful that there were no words to express it.

Do Not Fear

My Haitian hospital experience was for the most part, a comfortable one. Laying under crisp white sheets, in a freshly painted, air-conditioned en-suite room, I gave thanks for the graces I had been given. Like most ex-pat workers in Haiti, I did not have an insurance policy that would cover surgery and hospitalisation, in-country. Government travel warnings make it all but impossible to obtain insurance for travel to Haiti. This being the case, I was mentally preparing myself to endure surgery and recovery at the Haiti Baptist Mission Hospital. I had visited this center shortly after the 2010 earthquake, and had found a set up very like that of a World War One field hospital. The Haiti Baptist Mission was primitive;  this private hospital in Port-au-Prince was one of the country's best.

The journey there, along Haiti's torn and pot-holed roads had been a jarring one and an exercise in enduring pain. I made it through the journey by extending my arms down against the car seat in an attempt to splint my inflamed belly as best as I could, while our Haitian Paediatrician, who, insisted on personally escorting me downtown for lab work and investigations, urged her driver to go slowly and avoid the bumps. The poor man did the best he could but there is no avoiding the bumps on our mountain road!

I gritted my teeth, grimaced and grunted through a painful sonogragram, mindful  that had these diagnostic tests been performed 24 hours earlier, when my pain had been so bad that I hadn't been able to stand up straight, the procedure might have been absolutely unbearable. At a dingy clinic in the Chanmp De Marrs district of the city, the only clinic that was able to fit me in on an emergency basis, the diagnosis was made. I had a severely inflamed appendix and should go directly to the hospital.

I had been slightly dehydrated when I left God's Littlest Angels but from mid-day onward, I had been instructed to stay strictly nil by mouth.That meant no fluids, and no medications. Hearing this, I had pleaded for an injection  of something for nausea, before I left the orphanage, but the Paediatrician said there wasn't time for that.  Several hours in the Port-au-Prince heat had taken it's toll on my body. I was completely parched by 6pm that night, when I was admitted to the hospital. I remember pleading with my surgeon, in the admissions office of the Canape Vert Hospital, to give me a glass of water. Just a little one. Maybe a few sips, or at least some ice chips? I'm sure I was quite pitiful. The surgeon look at me fondly, shook his head, laid his hand on my shoulder and told me I would get all the fluids and medications I needed intravenously.

The nursing care I received in that hospital harked back to an earlier time; nurses in starched white uniforms wore caps pinned to their hair and delivered particular care, under the leadership of a matron. Matron checked in on each and every patient daily, including on Sundays.

On admission, an IV was quickly inserted and I was given potent IV pain medications, three IV antibiotics and a liter of IV fluid. As the Doctor explained to me that I was not well enough for surgery, I had a flash of insight into why my Grandfather might have died. It is unlikely he would have received IV fluids during the course of his illness. If he was given antibiotics before surgery, which I doubt, they certainly would not have been as powerful as the ones I was being given now. I was in the hands of a skilled surgeon, and an attentive nursing staff; he was treated by a General Practitioner on a remote Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. His surgeon was a man, who, was known to practice while under the influence of alcohol. James Westwood barely stood a chance. I knew this, as I slipped into a  delirium of dancing lights and fire-work displays. 'Do you feel up to talking?' a  visitor asked one day. I smiled and shook my head slowly. 'I don't talk now. I just dream.'

The next morning, my pain killers had worn off, I was being prepared for surgery, and I was in more pain than I could bear. The infection was advancing throughout my abdomen and my peritoneum and the slightest movement or the lightest touch to my abdomen sent pains shooting throughout my belly and up into my chest and shoulder. My Anaesthetist stopped by to check in on me. Recognising that I was suffering, she smiled understandingly. 'It's almost over, I'm here,' she reassured me.

My transport to the operating suite was truly agonizing. I remember wincing as the trolley went over bumps along the route. Flat on my back, moving at  a speed I could not control, nauseated and dizzy. I was gripped my terror, and all confidence in God and my surgical team suddenly abandoned me. I was sure I was going to die! I wanted my Mum!

I was wheeled directly into the operating room, where, I was strapped to the operating table, arms outstretched and legs extended. Being restrained in that position intensified both my pain and my fear. To my horror, a male operating room assistant then began partially undressing me to attach ECG leads. Despite the gentle handling and reassuring humour of the Doctors and nurses, I could not shake the feeling that I was about to be crucified in this austere, brightly lit room. All kinds of thoughts raced through my mind about what was going to happen next. As lovely as the staff tried to be, I was not soothed. They offered no explanation for anything that they were doing to me. The nurses on the inpatient unit had been reprimanded by the surgeon: according to the order he had written, I was to have received 3 liters of IV fluid overnight, not 2. Now, I wasn't even stable enough for surgery, he complained, but the surgery would have to go ahead because there was no more room for delays.

'Why did they start an IV in that vain, anyway' an operating room nurse snapped. 'It's not suitable for re-hydration!'

'Her veins were shut down, yesterday,' the anaesthetist answered. 'They weren't good at all.
'Oh, she was sick yesterday,' the nurse shot back. 'Well, she's much worse today! Today she barely has a blood pressure at all!' Then, turning to me, and patting me on the arm, and reassured me, 'we'll find another vein, Cherie. Pa pe.'

Pa Pe . 'Do not fear.'

As the nurses worked to get a more reliable IV line into me, I looked up at the ECG monitor. Oxygen saturations in the low 90's. Heart beating at a steady 76 times per minute. oh, that was ominous! A day ago, my heart had raced at over 130 beats a minute at rest, in response to the infection. Today, I was critically ill, and my heart wasn't responding, not to the infection, and not to the fear that raged through me. I knew then, that the infection was beating me. It was a moment of cold clarity, in which I realized that I was dying. Dying was not just an invention birthed in my mind, by terror. It was a very real possibility, and I couldn't fight it. I wouldn't win. I was blind with panic, desperately reaching for father God. Where are you, now! Why have you left me? Why?

It was then that snatches of bible verses drifted into my head, spoken in a voice I perceived rather than heard. 

I will never leave you, nor forsake you. I will be with you unto the end of time. 

Do not fear. Do not be dismayed

Yes, he saw me, He knew, and he understood that I was in pain and that I was very, very afraid. He had endured far worse agonies. He had sweated blood. This, though, what was happening to me, was not a crucifixion, not a punishment and no-one intended to hurt me or shame me. He had been punished. They had intended to wound him, and to utterly humiliate him in the process. His suffering had been holy and it had brought me to God. Now, he was here to help me bear my suffering. I have taken on your infirmities, and I can bear your fear. I am a man of many sorrows. Give yours to me.

God had me where he wanted me and his eyes were on me. His spirit had had discerned the prayers I was too frightened to pray. Now, his face was turned towards me. He was telling me he would be be with me always.

Though I thought I was alone for a few, terrifying minutes, I never was. If suffering had to come, at least, I knew, I would face it with my God. Come what may, whether I lived or whether I died, I was going to be OK.

The anaesthetic was injected into my IV line.

'The mask has oxygen, breath gently.'

And with that, I drifted mercifully into oblivion.

Note: James Westwood was born on the 15th of May, 1927. Today would have been his 85th birthday. Happy Birthday Papa!