Baby Susan and More

May 17, 2008

The usual mixture of emotions today – a day filled with ups and downs.  Yesterday we went to the hospital to meet baby Susan Mhango, my namesake, and we took some great photos, which are shown here.  It was to be John if it was a boy or Susan if a girl.  It was a little overwhelming to think that this baby is named after me, and the honor and responsibility involved in that.  How do you leave Livingstonia when you are leaving your namesake behind?  As if it won’t be difficult enough to leave in so many ways.

Then this afternoon, David called to say he was on his way home from the job-training program he has been attending a few hours away, and that both his wife and the baby have malaria.  When he talked to his mother, he didn’t have much prepaid time on his phone to get information so I told him we would go up to the hospital to check and see what we could find out.  He wasn’t entirely sure that it was malaria, and we wasn’t certain that they were at the hospital rather than at home.  John and I knew from our visit yesterday that they were supposed to be discharged today, so I figured they were at the hospital, but wanted to go see how they were. 

We got there and this wonderful active baby we saw yesterday was had a high fever, was listless, sleeping, and had stopped eating.  It’s a very scary thing to see a little one so sick – and it just doesn’t seem right somehow that a 2-day-old baby should get malaria.  Apparently, the mother gets infected and then passes it on in the uterus to the baby through the shared blood system, and while it is quite unusual for it to happen, it happens.  John and I walked away saying how hard it is to keep from panicking about a newborn being so sick.  What made us feel a little better at least was that the baby was a good size when she was born  - about 7 pounds 10 ounces, and that she started to get treatment right away as they were still in the hospital.

We know one of the nurses at the hospital who is from Ireland, and I called her.  She said it is quite unusual for newborns to get malaria, but that she should be Ok having gotten treatment right away.  She was off duty today but said she’d check in later to see how they were doing.  I’m hoping she calls later, but we’ll have to see.  We’ll go up tomorrow to see how she is doing.

The other downer for the day was discovering that I received some bad grade information for the transcripts I was trying to complete for the 2007 graduates of the College of Education here.  I was so pleased, and the faculty and administration people were so happy too, to think that they now had transcripts for the 2007 graduates, and now it turns out they are wrong because I got the wrong grade sheet for one of the semesters.  I thought I had one project that I could cross off as completed when we leave, but there is no way I’ll have time to fix this before we go – and who knows what will happen after I leave. 

The up side of the day was going to a party tonight for the Roteract Club (a Roary club for college students as I understand it) of the College to celebrate the members who are graduating.  The kids did a great job planning the party and it included lots of music and dancing as well as a few speeches and gift presentations.  The music and dancing was the best, and we danced with some of the kids too.  A great way to end a day that was not a very happy one up to that point. 

May 18, 2008

I didn’t hear back from the nurse that we know last night, and both John and I had a rough night worrying about baby Susan.  It was such a helpless feeling to know that she was so sick and helpless.  I couldn’t even imagine how David and his wife and family were feeling.  I know John’s son Willie was in rough shape when they got him and asked if there were times he was worried that he might not make it and he said yes, and as he described little Will who was premature, and was only about 5 pounds when he came here at 3 months of age, with scabies and some kind of GI infection that caused him to lose even more weight, I realized how tough those little ones are even though they don’t look it. 

We finally reached David around 10am this morning and he said he had come by our house on the way to the hospital at around 5am but the house looked closed up – we actually got up around 5:30 so just missed him.  He had to walk up the mountain from the lake and didn’t get home until around 11pm last night so waited to walk the rest of the way up the mountain until this morning.  The good news is that baby Susan had already started to bounce back.  We went with him to see her around 2pm today and she was active again, her fever was down already and she was eating.  We got some more photos with David holding her, and I got to hold her too, as they wanted a photo of “double Susans”, so one of those photos is posted too.

Tomorrow morning, we will leave at around 9am to go to Nchenachena, a town about 20 miles away to visit Dr. Trywell Nyirongo who I mentioned in my last blog.  He has invited us to stay overnight and we are eager to spend some time getting to know him and find out more about the projects he is involved in here in Malawi, so there’ll be more to come about that no doubt.  David will ride with us, as that is where he is going for the rest of his training program these next 2 weeks.  He’ll go to the hospital before he comes so we can get an update too.  Nchenachena is the town he walked to for the interview to get this job, - 6 hours in each direction. 

May 20, 2008

We have visited Dr. Nyironigo, and had some real transport adventures that I will talk about in the next entry later today or tomorrow, but I wanted to get this posted.  Baby Susan and her Mom were released from the hospital yesterday and are both feeling much better.