From kisses to weeping...

Lucia, the child with cerebral malaria that received the blood transfusion yesterday, died during rounds today. She died 10 minutes after we rounded on her. I was there 10 seconds after her heart stopped beating. And there is nothing to do....futile to try CPR because what comes after CPR? And so her parents went from kissing me on the cheek yesterday to weeping on my shoulder today.

Most mothers won't touch their children. This mother took off the child's poopy pants, ran outside to scrub them, came in to wash the child, then picked out the child's best dress and jacket. The head nurse and I dressed the child for the mother as she was crying very hard during all of this.

This is when one of the two doctors in the hospital came over. He had come to the wards this morning to "help". He told me I needed to get back to work. I told him no, this is where I needed to be. He told me that the children still needed help while this one couldn't be helped. This was all said in front of the weeping parents with the dead child in front of us less than 10 minutes after she had died and the doctor had not even acknowledged the parents. That was it...my breaking point. I told him how I come every single day twice a day to take care of these children and that the rest of the children I would see later today. I told him that this child should not have died and how the parents needed to be comforted. When he disagreed, I listed off the long list of every mistake made and time the child was ignored when should have been seen. It was a very long list that makes me angry so I wont discuss the details. He still disagreed with me and stalked off.

The parents made some phone calls while the grandmother stayed with the body. And then more family arrived. Then the grandmother put little Lucia on her back, as all children are carried. And the parents and the family walked behind crying and praying in Tonga, as they walked through the hospital to go to the truck or donkey cart that would take them back to their village. It was funeral march in the realest of sense. She would be buried today directly next to the hut. Then most likely they would build another room over her grave site.

The rest of rounds were hell. The doctor yelled at nurses, the nutritionist, and argued with me on almost every patient. And the ward was over-flowing today. We had children in rooms that aren't even used for patients. At the end, the charge nurse and I agreed that the problem is a lack of compassion and unwillingness to learn. And I have no idea how to change that.