Well we had another eye opening day doing Hospice Home Visits. We traveled a long ways up into the mountains into Maasai land, where they lived in mud huts. It was so sad to see all the children in their torn and dirty clothes, but they had smiles that would light up the world. I am humbled by these people.
I am so impressed with this Hospice team that I have worked with for years. They have the most kind and caring hearts. The team consists of a doctor, nurse, social worker and pastor. They are show such love for these people.
The one case that really tore at our heart strings, was a 35 year old mom who is HIV + and has had TB two times. Her children were ages 13, 8 and 3. Her husband left right after the last child was born to go to work in Nairobi and has never come home. Her life is so challenging and she is working so hard to provide for her family. Every day she goes out into the fields to hand dig and hoe the crops. She obviously was having a hard time breathing, so I listened to her breath sounds and they were so tight and when I asked her to take a big breath she had chest pain. The TB has formed scar tissue in her lungs.
It is so sad because this mom so loves her children and is working so hard to provide for them and she said many times she goes to bed hungry. It was hard to keep the tears back. Finally I asked the doctor is it would be OK if I gave her some money to help her out and she said that would be great. The doctor said she cries all the time after seeing and her the stories of these poor abandon women who are working hard to provide for their families and are not able to care for themselves. Luckily all the children are HIV -.
We then gave her food to help feed her family, which consisted of rice, beans, oil, fruits and vegetables. She hugged us and said “God bless you”.
Thanks again to the donors of Hope Ministries, who helped provide these food bundles to all the hospice patients that we have visited these last 2 days. The pastor told me that he was so thankful for all Hope Ministries is doing to help his people in the community. I prayed with them and asked God to continue to give them strength and love to carry out their work.
The team could not believe that these patients had to walk all the way to town to get their antiviral Meds and CD4 counts drawn. We drove it in a car today and it is a long ways. One mom said she has to get up very early in the morning and walk to the clinic in town and then walks all the way the way home getting home late at night. WOW..so hard to believe.
Many of the patients that we saw are single parents that are widowed or the spouse has abandoned them and it usually was the man. They work so hard to feed and educate their children. Please keep them in your prayers.
Gayle
