This little girl, HS, is wasting away. After two months of vomiting and intractable abdominal pain she was brought by her father to Kijabe, having lost 1/3 of her body weight. She is a refugee of sorts, her family moved across the border into Kenya from a neighboring country. After several days in the hospital, being treated for one infection that is probably not the main problem, her father demanded to be discharged today. I could not comply. And so an hour of negotiation ensued. He's from a culture that is abrupt and hostile. I'm from a culture that believes a child should not be sent home to die with a potentially curable problem. Even if the father says he has six other children. Thanks to random relatives, and my MO intern, we reached a compromise that he would give us until Tuesday to find the problem. This afternoon she returned from a CT scan with the diagnosis of intussuseption. We suspect underlying TB. Tomorrow she will have surgery. In the long tense discussions this morning I sensed that HS's father has the same heart as God our father--he was standing up for his child, and he went to the trouble of getting her here. I pray that she would be healed in a way that miraculously points to Jesus' love. Jesus does not give up on us, and we sometimes have to stubbornly refuse to give up on others.
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