Izote

This afternoon another staff member and I set out to visit a new beneficiary whom we had heard was sick and had sent some medicine to yesterday afternoon. We anticipated a short check-up visit, maybe a chance to encourage her a bit. When we stepped down into the painted mud-walled home we immediately realized the situation was much worse than we thought. She was curled in her bed, moaning and furtively glancing helplessly around. When we tried to ask her some questions, she couldn’t even focus but instead seemed to be staring far beyond us. She was acutely dehydrated, and had no family or friends to care for her. Apparently she’d been in bed for about 5 days and hadn’t had any food or much water. I held her hand, checked her pulse, counted her breaths—all the while holding mine as I prayed that we would be able to do more for this precious one than just hold her hand. She kept moaning, alternately grabbing us and pushing us away. We knew she needed to go to the hospital, but you can’t take someone without having family or someone to stay with them. So we called all the neighbor women in. Within a few minutes, the little one-room house was filled with old women whose lives are filled with their own struggles. After much discussion, one sturdy woman said she could come to the hospital at 7 tonight. So we sent someone out to get a taxi to come as close as possible. Then we awkwardly pulled her out of bed, tugged her wet dress down to cover her legs, and slowly lurched out the door, along the rock-imbedded path, down an alley to the waiting taxi. Three of us squeezed into the car with her and headed to the main government hospital. As we sped along, I was facing the back window, helping to support her body with mine—all the while thinking, “This is the craziest ‘ambulance’ ride I’ll probably ever have”. When we arrived at the emergency department, we got a stretcher and again clumsily shifted her onto it. As we rolled into the dimly lit hospital entryway, we sighed in relief to see a nursing friend of ours standing there. Had it not been for her, we wouldn’t have made it past that entryway regardless of how sick our patient was. Eventually we were allowed a spot along the hallway wall, so we wheeled her in between people, stretchers, patients, IV bags, infusing blood, and medical staff. I stood there with my hand supporting her head on the pillow-less stretcher, wanting to give her the help she needed yet feeling as though my hands were tied by so many things. All the while, she continued to moan and look up with unfocused eyes, clutching me at times and breathing rapidly. Ever so slightly she turned her head into my gloved hand and it seemed as though she gave me the slightest kiss. My heart heaved.
All I could do, all I could say even as I prayed this whole time was “Izote, Izote”.
Be strong, be courageous, press on.