Discovering Agapé

I would say that the main focus for me this week has been understanding love. In my life now I am being challenged to understand what love looks like for me as a women of God, a friend, a wife, and a nurse.

Beginning on Tuesday I was at a clinic/hospital called Eastboom in Pietermitzburg. My experience at Eastboom will forever be engraved into my heart. It is not easy to walk into Eastboom and not be overwhelmed with the many bodies, smells, sounds, and sights that enter into all of my senses. There must be over 100 people in a small room waiting to be seen, children laying on the floor with hardly enough room to make a walk way without stepping over a child. I must remember that I am only a student nurse and it will not be by my own power or strength that I can fix every person at the clinic; it is important that I accept this in order to not take away from the patients that I am able to see and help. I spend most of my days in the pediatric unit. The main caseloads of patients that I see are children with pneumonia.

I started out one day in the family planning section giving Depo shots to many women as a form of contraceptive. Once I got somewhat tired of giving injections I went outside. Outside, I saw this small girl standing with her mother; I could see from a distance that the child was breathing fast, was weak, and her eyes were rolling back in her head. I approached her and her mother and counted her respirations, they were 72 breaths per minutes and her pulse was 150bpm. The right lung sounds were absent. I asked her mother how old she was and if she had any prior conditions. The mother informed me this small child was 5 years old and has HIV. I knew in my head and in my heart that this child was literally dying and each of her breaths was using the entirety of her energy. Patients usually have to wait at least 3 hours to be seen by a nurse, but in all honesty I didn’t know if this child had 3 hours to live. I brought her into the pediatric unit and took her to the front of the line to see a nurse. We immediately got her on oxygen and called an ambulance to come pick her and her mother up. It took the ambulance two and a half hours to come and get her. This child only weighed 11kg (22lbs) at 5 years old! It was an extremely hot day, the room she was in had no windows and no air flow so I stayed with her for 2 hours simply using a newspaper to fan the child in hopes of giving her some sort of comfort. She couldn’t even lay down because it was too difficult for her to breath. I believe she must have TB or sever pneumonia with her HIV. With the condition of TB or pneumonia in combination with HIV, this little girl is at stage four AIDS and is dying right before my eyes

The next patient that I found was a small boy with his grandmother. He looked no more than 3 mo old, however his road to health card stated he was 1 year and 1 month. He only weighed 4.4kg, which is 9.68lbs (that is less than one pound more than I weighted when I was born!). This child was also using all of his energy to breath with sever chest retractions. His mother passed away from suicide on January 01, 2010 and now the grandmother is caring for him and his three others siblings. She says that the child has TB and HIV, which again puts him at stage four AIDS. He was severely malnourished, however the grandmother stated that she has no money to buy the child food. She also states that every time she feeds him he throws up. I started to pour water and then formula into his mouth every few minutes while burping him in between. He got a total of 1ml water and 1ml formula over 1.5 hours and didn’t vomit. I see that it takes much time and effort to feed this child and making sure that he is getting burped properly, and I just don’t know that the grandmother has the time or the energy to do this for him. She started to cry because of how overwhelmed she is and how little money she has to care for the children.

It is easy to be at Eastboom and get extremely overwhelmed by the vast amount of people and the extremely limited conditions, but I found hope in being able to be with these two children that day. The time that I was able to spend with them was not the time that the nurses had available, for they are much overworked. It is at a clinic like this where there are over 1,000 patients coming through each day that it is easy to get consumed and frustrated with the quantity of care that is needed, but I find my hope and my joy through the small amount of quality of care that I am able to give to these families. It is not by my own love that I am able to love on these innocent children, but rather it is the love of the Holy Spirit pouring out through me onto His children. It is like my heart is overflowing with a deep deep love that I never knew I could feel. The last time I felt this supernatural love was when I was in Ghana at the orphanages; I know this is not my love, but Christ living through me.

Once this exhausting week was over we got to spend Saturday at the beach in Durban, what a treat that was! It has been ridiculously hot here so it is nice to get into the ocean to cool down. When we are at the beach we are only able to swim in a small confined area where there are shark nets. Apparently the sharks are quite active and hungry.

Yesterday was Valentines Day. I have never been a big Valentine’s Day celebrator, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t constantly reminded that the love of my life was half way across the world form me on this day that we are to celebrate love. I felt a heaviness in my heart and a longing to be with him. I trust however, that God has me here to grow as a wife to better love my husband, thus I rejoice in knowing that when we get to be together again we will have an even better understanding of what our love represents. God has answered our prayers and Chad has been able to book a flight to come out here to visit from March 16-26^th! Right after that Mom gets to come! I can’t wait! As a group we all got dressed up and had a nice Valentines dinner with candles, music, and roses. Although I didn’t get to celebrate the day of love with Chad, I felt blessed to be surrounded by many people I am growing to love deeply.

I am falling in love with this country more each day that I am here, but I am also being struck in the face with the injustices and inequalities that surround the people of this beautiful nation. Thank you for allowing me to share this all with you and I hope to hear from you soon. Be blessed and filled with His love.