Mary's Story: Part Two

The story continues...

On Saturday 11^th May we get a phone call to say Mary was in labour. And here it is… the moment we’d been waiting for, make or break time for Mary and her baby. Mbale does not have any neo-natal intensive care, there are no incubators and no specialist care wards. We were uncertain whether to try and take her to Kampala, but in the end I realised that we had to trust God and the midwives where we were and that was that - I had to let go of my western expectations, fears and worries.

After a tense few hours (involving a very weak mother, a 20 minute power-out and the midwife answering a mobile phone mid-way through pushes), Mary gave birth, by normal and fairly uncomplicated delivery to a small but apparently healthy little boy who was unanimously named Miracle. They were discharged the next day and sent back to J.O.Y Hospice, the clinic where Mary has been cared for since December. 

Baby Miracle, one day old

Everything seems well, it truly is a miracle and we’re all on cloud nine. We’re so utterly amazed that it went to smoothly and that both mum and baby Miracle were still alive.  

However, the next day, Miracle is rushed back into Mbale main hospital with complications and suspected internal bleeding. The Acute Children’s Ward in Mbale Regional Hospital is a room with only four beds; each holding three children and a lingering mother or guardian. For the time we were on the ward there was one nurse and one medical officer coming through sporadically. It was overwhelmingly helpless. 
The one redeeming part was that by God's grace we happened to have a British paediatric intensive care nurse, Sarah who had arrived in Mbale just a fortnight earlier. Sarah was able to take over the care of Miracle and stayed with him for the whole day. It a very tense time as she was making decisions that only doctors would make in the UK. What a God-send!

While baby Miracle was fighting for his life, Mary was readmitted into hospital with severe abdomen pain and concerns of post-birth complications. She could barely walk for the pain and was being bounced from ward to ward. There were no available wheelchairs, no doctors around... no apparent system to help such patients. She was eventually seen in the Maternity Ward and fortunately discharged a few hours later.

Baby Miracle’s condition had continued to deteriorate, he was passing a lot of blood from both ends and was fading rapidly. His breathing was getting shallower and Sarah felt there was nothing else we could do with the resources available. 

In Mbale there is an exceptional children’s hospital, CURE, a specialist neurosurgery facility focused on Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida cases. Due to their specialisation, they  normally can't take outside cases, but amazingly agreed to open their ICU to Miracle. Miracle was put in a baby warmer, under phototherapy lights for jaundice, and given fluids and medicine. And while we didn’t know if he would make it through the night, we knew he was being given the best chance he could hope for in Mbale. A chance he might never have had if there weren’t this gaggle of strangers fighting for him to survive, and an amazing God taking care of Him.

Thankfully Mary was able to visit Miracle within 24 hours, and finally hold her baby boy. It turned out he had Necrotizing Enterocolitis, a condition common in premature babies and very treatable with the right diagnosis and medicine. Just three days later Miracle was discharged having received exceptional care from the CURE staff.  And now both mother and baby are back in J.O.Y. Hospice as Mary continues to be treated for her burns.

And so her treatment goes on. She will still need to have her wounds dressed by medical staff for the foreseeable future. Seven months later she still screams in agony every time they change the dressings. In June she will meet with a plastic surgeon from a private hospital in Entebbe who may be able to help her with further treatment for her wounds. Miracle will be registered with a local paediatrician who will hopefully be able to monitor his situation and help to ensure he grows to be a healthy little boy.

This story is both tragic and beautiful. It tells of the power and ability for our choices to either build or destroy life. It shows the significance of unity, the power and necessity of combined skills and gifts and the privilege it is to demonstrate Gods love through practical care. It has shown me the dedication of a mother, who for 7 months has slept on a mat on the floor by the side of her sick daughters bed; a mother who has helped her 17 year old to wash, use the bathroom, to eat and to dress. It has shown doctors and nurses who aren’t just medical professionals, but people who treat their patients with extreme love, grace and tenderness, despite the extreme resource limitations they are forced to contend with. It has shown how complete strangers all over the world really want to know that a vulnerable mother and baby had a chance to survive. This story has reminded me just how unique God has made us all, how much he loves us and how much he loves us to love others. And it has reminded me that every single life is worth fighting for. Miracle is a gift from God, a glimmer of hope in a story that seemed hopeless. 

Mary is one person in a crowd of thousands that we’ve been able to help. There are many many others we can’t help. Does that mean we shouldn’t have helped her? I don’t believe so. I believe we had an opportunity to love this one girl well and we’ve been blessed to do so. Mary’s future is still one that likely expects many many more challenges, especially health wise, but some battles have been won… and we give thanks for that. Many people have paid a high price to love Mary. She is completely and utterly worth it.

And as Mother Teresa once said... 

“I never look at the masses as my responsibility; I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time - just one, one, one. So you begin. I began - I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up forty-two thousand....The same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family, the same thing in your church, your community. Just begin - one, one, one.”

And that's what we must do. We love. One by one by one. Thank you for following this story.   

N.B.. I haven't posted any photos of how Mary looks now because she is so utterly ashamed of her appearance. She does all she can to hide her face even when its just me in the room. It's been such a roller coaster for her and in order to respect her privacy I can't post her picture. 



Can you Help?
Mary’s care has so far cost us over £1000. This far exceeds our normal budget for health support but we were left with little choice than to continue with sponsoring her care in faith.

If you are able and would like to contribute towards Mary's care (previous and ongoing), please do so here. 

If you would like to generally support JENGAs Hospital Ministry 'Hands of Love', which seeks to help other patients unable to afford medical care, please click here.

  

For Further Information: 

JENGA: www.jengauganda.org    Email: Tjvale@gmail.com  

CURE Hospital Uganda:  www.cure.org

JOY Hospice, Mbale: www.mbalehospice.org

Mary's Story: Part One

Here is a story about a girl called Mary. I must warn you in advance that the photos are beyond shocking; I don't post these to emotionally manipulate you, but because they truly capture the heartbreaking reality of a girl whose life has been turned upside down.  If a picture speaks a thousand words, you couldn't find a more eloquent way to add to this story...

Mary in early 2012

In November 2012, the JENGA staff were asked to pray for a young 17 year old girl called Mary who had been maliciously burnt. Sadly it is quite common here that young girls, desperate to find love, affirmation and financial security are often lured into relationships with older (and even married) men. It seems that Mary had fallen into the same trap and had met a ‘pastor’ who she had got to know over a few weeks. It started off as just prayers together but inevitably led to something more.  

A sister-in-law of the man was angry about this relationship, as she had intended for him to marry her sister. She decided to resolve the issue and attacked Mary by pouring incredibly hot boiling water over her.  We don't know exactly what happened, but severe burns covered Mary's entire face, torso and parts of her legs; a malicious attack intended to permanently maim Mary. 

This is how we found Mary.
We have the photos of her straight
after the attack but they are too grim to
post here

As the local hospital lack the facilities to adequately look after such cases, they had referred Mary to Kampala. Mary's family were, like most people here, unable to pay for her medical treatment, and so she was discharged and returned to her village where she would inevitably die a slow and painful death. This is when we heard her story. 

Domestic cases like this are common, and we don’t have infinite resources, but as a team we felt a strong urge to go and investigate. The team found Mary lying in the dark in excruciating pain, with dirty old bandages around wounds so severe she had to lie naked and eyes that couldn’t stay open. It was truly heart-breaking and we felt we just had to help, so that night, a car was hired and Mary was taken to Kampala. We found out that Mary was a few weeks pregnant – it got more and more complicated, but we knew we had to at least try and help her.

Mary's stomach when we found her in the village

Mary stayed in Kampala until Christmas, being treated in Mulago Hospital. Throughout this time, we provided dressings and drugs for Mary, along with food and living expenses for her caregiver. (In Uganda every patient has to have a caregiver with them as there are neither staff nor facilities to cook for, provide clean bedding or bathe the patients.)  As Mary’s treatment continued there were talks about terminating the pregnancy for the sake of her recovery but nobody wanted to take that step and the doctors decided ‘to let nature take its course’.

In December we moved Mary back to Mbale to J.O.Y. hospice, a community-based clinic we regularly use. It was nearer to home and gave the rest of her family a bit more of a chance to help where they could. Her wounds were still extensive and healing poorly mainly because they were so deep and had not been treated as well as they should have been in Kampala. Her stomach was the biggest struggle because as it contracted for the baby, the wounds had little chance to heal. Her body was using all of its resources to keep the baby alive – there was little left to heal her wounds.

As the months passed, Mary continued to make progress. Amazingly the baby continued to grow, but Mary had lost a lot of weight and her wounds remained raw and very painful. The reality of Mary’s situation was grim, scarred physically and emotionally she had little desire to fight for her life, or that of her baby.

In April, Mary was finally physically able to undertake a scan - previously they had not been able to because of the open wounds on her stomach. They estimate she’s somewhere between 32 and 36 weeks at the end of April.  We find out that the little life that has miraculously reached this far is a boy.  We can’t wait to meet him!

Hope is in the air… but it’s tinged with a hint of fear on all of our parts… everyone who had been involved in her care for the last 6 months is more than a little scared that after this long battle something will go wrong at the last hurdle. I wish I hadn’t had that fear… because life is not in our hands …But its so hard sometimes not to be overwhelmed by the sight in front of you, especially when from human perspective what I was seeing was a young girl, permanently scarred, still in pain, far smaller in stature than when we first met her even though she was carrying a baby.  Mary was almost skeletal apart from a tiny bump and had no evidential hope or excitement to meet her baby. It is hard to have faith in that situation, but it turned out God was still going to surprise us!

To be continued...

Mary in the village in November. 

Mary’s care has so far cost us over £1000. This far exceeds our normal budget for health support but we were left with little choice than to continue with sponsoring her care in faith.

If you are able and would like to contribute towards Mary's care (previous and ongoing), please do so here. 

If you would like to generally support JENGAs Hospital Ministry 'Hands of Love', which seeks to help other patients unable to afford medical care, please click here.

For more information about JENGA please go to www.jengauganda.org. 

Thank you

It's ok, I didn’t know I still had a blog either!

It’s no secret that I am not a keen blogger! Well duh! It’s 4 years since I last wrote one! I’m not going to start and say that these will suddenly appear on a consistent basis… but I am going to try and write every now and again!  Why now? Well… when I first set this thing up I was only here for 6 months and just wanted to get on and live life here as fully as the short time would last. That time didn’t quite pan out as I thought it would and I stayed on! Then life got a bit silly for a while and I didn’t have the emotional or mental capacity to write. And while life goes on (and still has the odd silly moment) and I feel like many things are uneventful and ‘normal’ to me…. there are stories to tell, images that I would just love you to see and moments that I’d wish you to get a glimpse of…

This is the first time in a long time that my life feels like it’s finally getting into a rhythm that I can go with and that is why I think I can start to write a blog.

So… this is Tiff in Uganda! Back online!

So lets start with where I’m at in 2013. I still live in Mbale Uganda. My house is a house of girls… 1 permanent housemate (Nat) and then a steady transition of various (and all fabulous) girls coming through for varying amounts of time. I have many very special friends here, both Ugandan and ex-pats. I still work for JENGA. I still LOVE what I do. I do general admin, I write things, I make already written things look presentable, I talk to donors, I arrange teams and visitors.. basically my job is to help behind the scenes so that our incredible team of staff can get out there in the field and do their jobs effectively. Where I can I get out there in the African mud and get my hands dirty!

What has changed over 4 years? Well firstly I still make many mistakes (but I now try to learn from them a little quicker than I did when I first arrived!) I still don’t really have many more answers to the hard questions but I can now tell you about culture from experience more than just hearsay. I am a little less gullible and naïve; not as easily shocked but still moved by the hard things. I still firmly believe that there is good in the world, that it’s better to start working with one life than to walk away feeling helpless or overwhelmed. I still believe that Uganda is a beautiful country with some of the most alive, faith-filled and expectant people on earth. I still believe that God is the only answer to the seemingly endless number of challenges and that he has given us the wonderful privilege of working with him to actively demonstrate a love that conquers all.

Now I’ll leave it there… this was just the reinstatement of a blog that will go with the flow of my life in Uganda.

Next time I have a story to tell. The story of Mary, a 17 year old girl who was horrifically burned in a domestic violence brawl.  (cue Eastenders cliff-hanger music.. bam bam bammm)

The well overdue update of joy!

Ok so what has been going on in the life of Le Tiff?! A lot... so sorry I haven’t written for so long!

The majority of this update is all about my foot, the accident and the progress of its healing. There are pictures so be warned!! The last two months have been a continuation of learning and adjusting to life here. Working in the office, doing admin, working on prayer updates, news updates, annual reports etc etc. I’ve kind of slipped into a secretarial type role knocking off all the little jobs that nobody else has time to do. I’m learning a lot- some things the hard way but it’s all been good. I’ve had more lessons in just learning to ‘be’ rather than everything working around what I ‘do’. I’ve had time and space to rest, read and to receive. Although it hasn’t always been in the way I would like, God has certainly answered every prayer I prayed before coming here about been taken to a point where I could only rely on him and not on my own strength and abilities. JENGA continues to be a really exciting organisation to work for with much promise for its future.

The View from our office!

Early in the month Amy and I begun the arduous process of visa applications in Kampala. This is an insanely stupid process that takes multiple trips to visit a window in the Immigration building to be greeted by an indignantly moody woman who takes it upon herself to make the process as difficult as possible. She decides what documents you need and depending on just how bad her day is going will throw in the demand for the odd random item that you didn’t expect and so didn’t bring. No kidding. You leave your documents there for them to process then you go back 10 days later to see if you’ve been accepted and then provided you’re successful (which we weren’t initially!)you take a piece of paper to a bank in town and then wait a day for them to fiddle about with a few things then return to pick up a receipt and take that back to the moody lady in the window at immigration where she will stamp it; If you’re lucky! We are pleased to report that eventually with the help of a JENGA director or two to sweet talk said moody lady we have been allowed to stay in the country until our return to the UK in August.
In the midst of all of that was Safari time. The group of us volunteers decided to go to for a ‘Big 5’ safari trip. You start in Kampala and then leave early Monday morning to drive 6 hours north to Murchison Mark. Simple. Well... not quite!! Sunday evening, with the Arrival of Anna’s friend Joy we decided it would be a good opportunity to take advantage of Kampala’s cuisine selection. Kampala is a lot bigger and further on than Mbale in terms of what’s available. Chinese was our choice given that none of us had had it in months and so off we went. As I’ve said before, the main way of getting around here is by motorbike taxi. In Mbale they go a lot slower and the roads are much much quieter but in Kampala it is a different story as the city is more developed and there are an insane number of cars about! So anyway off we went, leaving our hostel to go to Fang Fangs. Joy came on a picky with me and we followed in convoy. Then our picky had a minor disagreement with a pothole and swerved a bit over to the other side of the road. Oooops. Joy came off first but I managed to stay on a bit longer. The driver bless him did his best to try to slow down as much as possible but then I came off. And the bike landed on top of me. Nice! All I felt at the time was the heat of the exhaust on my toe. Little did I know!!

Amazingly there were no other cars coming the other way and ‘all’ that we came out with was Joy having a badly twisted ankle and a few cuts (her foot went into the wheel- thankfully she had shoes on so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been) and me.. well I had cut my right ankle pretty badly- what we now think happened was the metal foot-rest went into my foot thus resulting in a wound about 7cm long by 4cm wide and then pretty deep! WOOP! So what does one do in Africa with a hole in your foot?! Well our programme director Jo, previously a Nurse in the UK, was with us on the trip and she was quite frankly a saint that night-(and incidentally for the following 5 weeks!) We waited by the side of the road for a little while to put pressure on my foot and Jo kept everyone calm. Bizarrely I was pretty chirpy and not crying my eyes out; there was just an amazing sense of relief and thankfulness to God for his protection. I did have a minor freak-out when I saw the blood but because I hadn’t seen the wound and I didn’t really understand how there was that much blood everywhere!! Anyway...after a some reassurance from anna and jo, and again amazingly, a friend of ours from mbale called Ian was in Kampala that night and so came and picked us up and drove us to ‘The Surgery’ a 24hr clinic run by an English doctor dude. The doctor on duty managed to do a great job of pulling it all together and 6 internal and 13 external stitches later I was on my way back to the hostel. I never saw the wound in its original glory- think that was for the best! Just another war wound to add to the collection!

The next day we went via the clinic for a quick check-up and then drove the long journey up to the safari camp. This was actually the best place to be post injury as I was able to have my foot elevated for hours!! We were up early for the safari and saw loads; Baboons, antelope type creatures, Ugandan Cobs, Elephants, Giraffes, Warthogs (yes we sung the tunes from the Lion King the whole way!) lions, hippos, crocs, buffalo etc! It was amazing! There was a boat trip in the afternoon where we saw even more. Absolute stonker of a trip and we loved every minute- despite the crippled-ness and crutches! Everyone was incredible at keeping my mind off things and were brilliant all week!

On the way back the others went rhino tracking. Which was definitely not an option for me- walking through tall grass trying to find whopping great rhinos was not something I could really partake in- I could barely move on the crutches at that point let alone run from a charging fatty mammal. They had fun though!

So we had a day or so again in Kampala to say goodbyes to teammate Emily, an overdue trip to Fang Fangs and to welcome a couple new visitors. Another trip or 2 to the surgery, a visit to the immigration window and a quick stop at the joyously stocked supermarket (well I watched while everyone else shopped!) and we were on our way back to Mbale!

So since all that palaver it has just been a case of recovering sloooowly. The wound has gone through various different shapes, colours and sizes as stitches came out, infections came and went etc. I still couldn’t walk after 16 days so I was referred to some orthopaedic doctor dude about an hour away in a hospital in Kumi. It was still painful to try and weight bear at all and so we needed his opinion. He seemed to know what he was saying so I was then given a back slab plaster cast thing for the next 12 days. Thankfully it was a half one coz flippin eck it was heavy!! I still had to have dressings changed on the wound every 2 days so it was regular trips to the local clinic in Mbale called J.O.Y hospice. They now know me well! Then back to Kumi for plaster slab removal and check up.
Now it’s looking a lot better, the wound is being dressed every day at the clinic and although there’s still a bit of a hole the healing is finally on track! The last week has all been about learning to walk again but that is coming along nicely and I no longer need crutches.
So all in all life has been pretty crazy.

Work has been limited as I couldn’t really get far. The steps to our office are really steep so once I got up I stayed up till the end of the day! As frustrating as it has been to not be able to walk, drive or carry anything for 4 weeks it has been a really good time. I don’t think I so much needed a lesson in slowing down as before the accident I really was managing to balance things and not to over-work, but it has given me space to think and pray more and to see what God was up to. I realised more and more how much I love it here and although there has been some raw character development in the process and some frustratingly slow adjustments to life in Africa, the time has confirmed I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. So after a month’s break in the UK in August, I am coming back longer term to Mbale. I have no idea what to do specifically but I know it’s where I’m called to ‘be’ – God will fill in the rest! There is just too much going on here to walk away from. I don’t mean the obvious practical world peace things that anyone would struggle to turn their back on but on a different level I feel so excited and expectant for everything here and not being a part of it wasn’t an option! God has stirred in me such a faith and desire to work here with the people and ministry. I am more reliant on God than I have been before and that is a really exciting place to be. I believe there must and can be change to the situations here and that I want to be a part of helping to make that change happen. I don’t really know what I personally can do but I know I want to try and I hope that God will use me in any way he can!

So that is me! Tiff Vale, international woman of calamity, expectancy, faith and hope!
Please keep praying for healing and for wisdom as I prepare for the next season! Thank you for your support on this journey!

Tiff x
For the not so regular updates.... http://tiffinuganda.blogspot.com/

To sponsor me financially if you can! www.justgiving.com/tiffinuganda.