Helping Out Some Friends

When we were preparing to leave Romania for the sake of medical care in pregnancy, just after we made the difficult decision that we had to go, the opportunity came up to build a house for a family in desperate need of a home.  Our flights were booked, and we had to go in a certain time frame so I would be medically stable enough to fly after being treated in hospital.  Simon needed help to build the house in time, and I was sad for what would become of the work I had started and the plans for expanding it that seemed so close to being able to go forward.  Then along came Lauren​ and Mihai. 
Mihai is a builder by trade, a Romanian, and one wanting to see justice for Roma and those stricken by poverty in his own country.  Lauren is a teacher, babywearing consultant, and has been involved in La Leche League for a number of years.  They were the answer to our prayers and also very good friends to us.

While Mihai helped Simon build the house, Lauren came to our house and helped me pack.  I had been mostly bedridden for 3 months, and was under doctors' orders to rest lying down as much as possible and certainly not lift anything, but Simon was working from morning until night every day until the evening before the  morning that we had to leave - imagine trying to care for two small children and pack for an international move single-handedly when you are sick, fuzzy-minded on medication, and supposed to be staying in bed!  Thank God for Lauren!  She would turn up with snacks and games for the children and with her own baby boy, completely unfazed by the chaos, and cheer me up while helping to pack up our house.  Then Mihai offered to loan us his van and drive all the way from Romania to England and back again to get us home, while Lauren flew with me so I wouldn't have to worry about flying alone whilst ill.  It's pretty hard to find better friends than that. 

After we left, Mihai was set to take over the FFR building project, but sadly that didn't go forward and eventually he had to go back to the USA to find work to support Lauren and their two little boys.  Lauren took over running the meetings for LLL Brasov, as well as working in the hospital and running babywearing classes.  Eventually she took on the Moms project in the hospital, expanded it to the maternity hospital (a huge and very much needed step), and also to the village of Budila, as I had planned to do.  She has been working selflessly for many months, fighting child abandonment by supporting mothers, all the while Mihai has been back in the USA looking for work and saving up to find them a new home. 

After what must seem like a long, very long, time, Lauren, Tibi, and Ovi are going home to Mihai.  They are a family and they need to be together, but leaving Romania is very hard for them.  They have done so much for others, please consider helping them pay off their tickets so they can be together and not starting out with a debt.  They have already given up so much for others who have no way to ever repay them, including us.

https://www.facebook.com/MihaiandLauren?fref=ts

Kwashiorkor

There was a boy in bed 13*.  He was about one year old, with huge dark eyes, and such a smile.  I would have taken him home in an instant.  Him and his mother, whoever she was. 

He had the rusty orange hair of extreme malnutrition, and skin so pale from anaemia that it looked almost translucent.  Even by usual hospital standards, he should have been sitting up, but he didn't even have the strength to try and sit with help.  His arms and legs were like sticks, impossibly fragile, while his abdomen bulged so that he looked uncomfortable in any position but lying on his back.  The area of his swollen liver was visible, and when I changed him, I could barely fit the disposable nappy on between his shrunken little hips and swollen belly.  Think of a picture you might have seen of a starving African child in a famine, and then imagine that child with white skin and reddish hair.  This child was starving to death.  Yet he smiled.  His eyes would search out mine , and as soon as he'd made contact, his smile would spread all over his face, and his weak little body would wriggle with pleasure.  Someone loved this boy. His name was Nicolae.

 

I worried about him.  Had he made it to the hospital in time?  Would they be able to give him the care he needed? Surely someone who loved him would come back for him, and not leave him to be sent to an institution.  He had a way of twisting his head back and forth, jaw locked open, and his hands stayed fisted unless coaxed open; worrying signs in a place where something as minor as a feeding difficulty or mild learning disability might sentence a child to life in an institution.  Was there some condition underlying his physical state, or had the malnutrition already caused brain damage?

 

I double-checked the symptoms when I got home.  Severe anaemia, reddish hair colour, swollen liver, the bloated abdomen and muscle wasting on the limbs.  Kwashiorkor.  Advanced kwashiorkor.  It is a particular form of malnutrition, caused by lack of protein.  Not the first case I'd seen by a long shot, but definitely the worst.  I knew the common scenario: mother unable to breastfeed, family can't afford milk or safe bottle feeding, so the baby is fed on tea, usually with crumbled biscuit mixed in.  It keeps them alive, but there are few calories and no protein.  Babies of less desperately-poor families are likely to be given soups that will have had bones or meat boiled in them, but some live hand-to-mouth, knowing only that babies should have white bland stuff and tea, with no knowledge of nutrition and the importance of protein.  Even in doctors' offices I have seen brightly illustrated advertising posters aimed at wealthier parents, stating that children must only be fed baby food, milk and fruit until 3 years old; no meat, no 'grown-up' food.  It is no wonder that so many children among the general population suffer from stunting - and how much more difficult for families on the outskirts of society to know what is best for their children.

 

But for a child as malnourished as Nicolae, food could be deadly.  He would need very careful feeding to bring him slowly back to health without overtaxing his damaged organs.  I dug out my books on caring for severely malnourished children.  Someone had given them to me before we left for Romania, though I hadn't thought I would need them.

 

Back at the hospital, I tried to talk to the doctor.  This boy, the one in bed 13, he needs special care.  I had training in infant feeding, I have a book...  But she brushes past, down the hall.  I could do it, I could show the nurses, I would come every day...  She holds up her hand and gives me a look, still walking.  She doesn't have to say anything. I am overstepping the line.  I am only a volunteer.  I am supposed to keep my place.  A volunteer is a volunteer, allowed into the hospital in the trust that they will respect the rules and let staff do their jobs, no matter what training or expertise they may have in their own life.  She is at the end of the hall, talking to a group of people in white coats with clipboards.  The hospital is busy these days, people are stressed.  If I interrupt, I could be jeopardizing the welcome that volunteers have in the hospital, and then where would all the other babies be?  Too much is at stake. 

 

The couple in the small private room - are they his parents? It is only a guess, they could be anyone.  I could speak to them, but they are waiting for someone, I don't know their situation.  I would need a translator.  Their poverty and obvious lack of nutrition don't mean they are his parents; they could be anyone.  If they are waiting for the social worker, they will wait a long time, because she is busy.  I know, because I would have gone to her first of all to offer my books to the hospital.  I just wanted to help this baby boy, and I knew the nurses already had a lot to do.  Maybe he would be looking better in a few days.

 

But on my next shift he was gone.  There was another baby in bed 13.  I looked for Nicolae.  Had he been moved? ICU?  The answer hit me like the kick of a horse to my belly.  Sent home.  Discharged. The doctor said he wasn't sick, so he didn't need to be there.  I guessed that was why she had not been interested in talking about him.  He had already been discharged.  Maybe those had been his parents.  Whoever took him home hadn't got to talk to the social worker.   Nobody had offered them any suggestions of where they might go for help.  Nobody had talked to them about how to feed their child.  The frailest child I had ever seen, yet he was deemed not sick enough to take up a bed in a busy hospital. 

 

I was not going to be continuing to work in the hospital anyway, but I couldn't have kept going in after that.  Not for a long while, anyway.  That sweet boy, with his huge dark eyes and his all-over smile. 

 

I haven't much hope that little Nicolae ever made it through what would have been his second winter.  Severly malnourished children are prone to dying of hypothermia, and the Transylvanian winters are cruel to families living in makeshift shacks.  They can also go into heart failure if given too much fluid - a considerable risk where soup or herbal teas are likely to be the only staples the family has to give a starving child.  I can only hope he went quietly in his sleep, in the arms of someone who loved him and taught him to smile.



*For the sake of veracity: Bed numbers and names are not accurate.