(Ultra) Sounding off

After all the last minute fixing and fitting with our Visitors’ Centre our first guests are tucked up and recovering from a very long journey from the UK to our place. I’m sure there will be one or two, hopefully, small things to sort out as we go along but it’s been an encouraging start. In keeping with our vocational training aspirations we arranged for two of our older girls to prepare and serve supper in the Visitors’ Centre tonight and they did a great job – the nicest rice and beans I’ve eaten all week.

I feel really sorry for Hilda this evening. She has had the most horrendous day trying to arrange an ultra sound for a two year old boy who has an obstructed bowel. Over the years I have had some very frustrating experiences in Kenyan Hospitals, but nothing to match Hilda’s marathon today. The boy is the grandson of one of our staff, and his medical nightmare started earlier this week. The blockage in his belly has got worse over the course of the week and he was sent for treatment at the District Hospital in Oyugis, (our closest town). He was treated quite promptly for malaria but this didn’t do a lot to help. An x-ray was taken of his abdomen but it looked more like a map of Lake Victoria than anything else. An ultra sound would provide a better diagnosis.

Hilda set off on her mission to find a hospital that could do an ultra sound this morning, and finally made it back to our place at about 7 pm, having been to 5 hospitals in two different towns – all to no avail as none of them were able to perform the ultra sound. Tonight the child is in a hospital in Kisii, (about forty minutes drive away and much longer by public transport). The hospital he is in is unable to perform basic diagnostic tests and is unlikely to have anybody to perform an ultra sound until Monday. In the meantime the child’s situation is not getting any better.

Talking about the whole experience with Ian and Hilda tonight made us all think how fortunate we are in the West to have such good medical care. Our expectations of health care in Scotland and England are incredibly high, as is the standard of care. I know there are people who would say that basic nursing care and the whole experience of being in hospital are both poor in the UK at the moment. I haven’t been in hospital for a while so am in position to comment but, as far as I am aware, nobody has to share a bed with another patient in UK hospitals, doctors are generally on call 24/7 and you don’t have to pop across the road to the nearest pharmacy to buy the drugs you need as a hospital in-patient. Kenya is not a good place to be sick in – especially in a rural area like ours.

Ian and Hilda will be on the case, trying to secure the right treatment for this little boy tomorrow morning. As they go through the torturous task of finding out what can be done we can only pray that he will be able to hang on for long enough to receive the right treatment. I know that Ian and Hilda will do their best to make sure there is a good outcome to this very sad story. Unfortunately their best will be up against the best our local hospitals have to offer, so it is difficult to predict the outcome. It’s easy to ask the question “What would they do if we weren’t here?” in cases like this one as a way of managing the mixed emotions, (compassion, anger and frustration), that churn you up as you become involved. It’s a question that is easier to ask when you are safely home in the UK. Once you are ‘on the ground’ and have been made aware of the facts of cases like this one it is not easy to step back and say “I’m not here!”