On another bustling day at the hospital I heard over my phone, “Please come right away Dr. Jack, a baby is seizing.” I ran to the newborn unit and found a newborn child convulsing under out makeshift infant warmer.
When I arrived the nurse explained what happened. The mother had started labor approximately 24 hours before. She went to her nearby health center only to find it abandoned during yet another Kenyan government healthcare strike. While in labor, she clambered onto a motorcycle taxi and took the painful, several hour drive to our hospital in the hope of delivering her long-awaited child.
When she arrived it was clear that the baby had been struggling inside the womb and moments later she delivered a baby boy. The baby came out listless, not breathing, and our team started resuscitation efforts and provided lifesaving breaths. But unfortunately the damage had been done and his brain was tragically and irreparably damaged.
We started the baby on medications to control the seizures and several minutes later they stopped convulsing. We called the mother to the bedside to explain the situation. Exhausted, she attempted to grapple with the situation and the information she was receiving.
The only question she was able to respond with was, “Will my baby be okay?”. We explained that the prognosis was grim, but reassured her that we would do everything we could to help them.
During this nationwide Kenyan government healthcare strike we have been filled to overflowing with patients. The space has been cramped and people have been sleeping two to a bed. This mother of this sick child was placed in a bed in the hallway. As I often do, I raced many times from my office and back to the wards. As I passed this mother, our eyes would often meet. I would manage a small smile of reassurance, but she knew the reality of the situation, and did not return my expression.
The next day the baby took a turn for the worst. The baby stopped breathing and passed. The mother was exhausted and past the point of words as she heard the news. She took in everything without a tear. Despair was the only way to describe her demeanor.
As I reflect on this story, I am reminded that there have been so many similar stories to the one above over this past month. As families have come from so far away, with such long delays in care, many children are past the point of cure. In each of the parent’s despair, I can sense a similar feeling arise in myself.
This sense of desperation and hopelessness has stirred in me several questions.
“Where is my faith?”
“How desperate am I for God?”
A story that comes to mind is one of Jesus when he was one day walking through a crowd. People were pressing in around him, many desiring his healing. A woman with a disease of many years, who had gone to consider lengths to be cured, pushed her way through simply to touch Jesus believing he would heal her. As Jesus made his way forward, people coming from every side, he suddenly said “Who touched my clothes” for he had felt “that power had gone out of him.” (Mark 5:30) The woman was healed!
But one must ask the question, why was this woman healed when so many others were not? I believe part of it lies in her desperation, her belief that nothing else could help, and her complete faith in Jesus’ healing and power.
Have I come to that place of desperation? Where am I putting my hope and faith? Is it in my medical abilities? Is it in the hope that we will one day have a highly functioning hospital? Have I been like the Canaanite woman pleading “Lord, help me!… Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” (Matthew 15:26-28)
And now I ask you, have you come to that place? I believe it is in this place of desperation, of clinging to Christ, putting all of our hopes in Him, that God calls us. It is in this space of reckless abandonment that we are ever truly safe.