...who hasn't updated her blog in 2 weeks! So sorry about that! Things have been wild and wonderful and... exhausting!!!! I am loving every moment, even on the worst day here - where I am so frustrated by something, or even by one of the children - I feel so blessed to be able to be here as a newly consistant part of their lives.
Just under two weeks ago, one of our toddlers smashed his thumb in a security gate - nearly sliced it off from just behind the finger nail. Generally this would have meant putting him to sleep briefly so that they could stitch and we could have been on our way. In the case of this little one however, he is 18 months old and oxygen dependant most of the time (though he can run and holler like any 18 month old, he has lung disease as a result of exposure when he was abandoned as an infant). This constant need for extra oxygen meant that he would have needed a very expensive team of specialists to monitor his vitals if he was put under anesthesia. Because of this the private hospital we generally take our kids to sent us to Johannesburg General Hospital, a great specialty hospital, but a terrible one for general care. It is a government hospital, meaning that you only pay based on ability - since he is a government dependant his care would have been free.
We ended up waiting in that hospital for over three days, each day being told that his operation had been moved to the next day due to space availability. It was horrendous to see the neglect of the other children who didn't have family staying with them. One abandoned premature baby in the bed next to him wasn't changed or fed for HOURS and HOURS, so mothers of other children began caring for her. We had debates about whether her name should be Hope or Grace instead of "Bed B-143". Our team was getting so angry with the fact that our baby wouldn't be given food all day because he was going in for surgery, only to have it postponed at 6pm. On Sunday (the injury happened on Thursday) we decided we'd had it and I finally put my foot down with the nurses and removed him "against medical advice". It was so frustrating to see how this baby's house mother had been treated so disrespectfully by the nurses because she was black (the nurses were black as well, but for whatever reason didn't feel the need to treat people of their own race with any human dignity). It is infuriating that the fact that I'm white had them bending over backwards to get his paperwork completed and he was released less than 20 minutes after I had told the nurses that I was taking him home.
We took him back to the private hospital, where an orthopedic surgeon agreed to do the operation that same day because he was so horrified at how long this baby had to wait. The team there was amazing, and though we will probably have to pay through the nose for the care, it was SO worth it to have our kids and house parents treated with love and care.
As I alluded to before, racism is still so palpable sometimes in this country. Oftentimes actually. Even the quality of services available to whites verses those that are affordable to most blacks... Thankfully there is a growing black middle class, but it still feels so absolutely wrong to me to have a black man or woman, often twice my age, cross their arm when they shake my hand (a sign of submission and respect.) Everything in my wants to say "I should be doing this to you!!" but to reject their offer of respect would be seen as incredibly rude.
On a happier note, I took 6 nearly-adolescent girls to the movies last weekend in celebration of the fact that they had been wearing their new bras for an entire week! :o) Celebrating the small milestones I guess. They had been so resistant, saying that they were uncomfortable and on and on, so I finally resorted to all-out bribery. After a whole month of none of them missing a single day, we will go ice skating... (yes, I realize that I can't ice skate AT ALL, so I'm still trying to figure out how exactly I'm going to get myself out of actually having to be on the ice.)
SO... there are my notes for now! A team of Americans arrives on Wednesday, so the tour guide in me is preparing itself :o)
Love to all!
Just under two weeks ago, one of our toddlers smashed his thumb in a security gate - nearly sliced it off from just behind the finger nail. Generally this would have meant putting him to sleep briefly so that they could stitch and we could have been on our way. In the case of this little one however, he is 18 months old and oxygen dependant most of the time (though he can run and holler like any 18 month old, he has lung disease as a result of exposure when he was abandoned as an infant). This constant need for extra oxygen meant that he would have needed a very expensive team of specialists to monitor his vitals if he was put under anesthesia. Because of this the private hospital we generally take our kids to sent us to Johannesburg General Hospital, a great specialty hospital, but a terrible one for general care. It is a government hospital, meaning that you only pay based on ability - since he is a government dependant his care would have been free.
We ended up waiting in that hospital for over three days, each day being told that his operation had been moved to the next day due to space availability. It was horrendous to see the neglect of the other children who didn't have family staying with them. One abandoned premature baby in the bed next to him wasn't changed or fed for HOURS and HOURS, so mothers of other children began caring for her. We had debates about whether her name should be Hope or Grace instead of "Bed B-143". Our team was getting so angry with the fact that our baby wouldn't be given food all day because he was going in for surgery, only to have it postponed at 6pm. On Sunday (the injury happened on Thursday) we decided we'd had it and I finally put my foot down with the nurses and removed him "against medical advice". It was so frustrating to see how this baby's house mother had been treated so disrespectfully by the nurses because she was black (the nurses were black as well, but for whatever reason didn't feel the need to treat people of their own race with any human dignity). It is infuriating that the fact that I'm white had them bending over backwards to get his paperwork completed and he was released less than 20 minutes after I had told the nurses that I was taking him home.
We took him back to the private hospital, where an orthopedic surgeon agreed to do the operation that same day because he was so horrified at how long this baby had to wait. The team there was amazing, and though we will probably have to pay through the nose for the care, it was SO worth it to have our kids and house parents treated with love and care.
As I alluded to before, racism is still so palpable sometimes in this country. Oftentimes actually. Even the quality of services available to whites verses those that are affordable to most blacks... Thankfully there is a growing black middle class, but it still feels so absolutely wrong to me to have a black man or woman, often twice my age, cross their arm when they shake my hand (a sign of submission and respect.) Everything in my wants to say "I should be doing this to you!!" but to reject their offer of respect would be seen as incredibly rude.
On a happier note, I took 6 nearly-adolescent girls to the movies last weekend in celebration of the fact that they had been wearing their new bras for an entire week! :o) Celebrating the small milestones I guess. They had been so resistant, saying that they were uncomfortable and on and on, so I finally resorted to all-out bribery. After a whole month of none of them missing a single day, we will go ice skating... (yes, I realize that I can't ice skate AT ALL, so I'm still trying to figure out how exactly I'm going to get myself out of actually having to be on the ice.)
SO... there are my notes for now! A team of Americans arrives on Wednesday, so the tour guide in me is preparing itself :o)
Love to all!
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