2AmericansTravel: This Is The Air I Breathe

This post was tough to write but was so important to write. I promise that next posts will be much lighter as we visited the babies home, had a party in Kampala, and went on safari! I ask my readers to bear with me on this difficult one.

Beatrice Meeting with a patient for Hospice Jinja

The most challenging places we went in Uganda, for me, were the Hospices. I am very good with children and babies, but I am very uncomfortable around the sick. God stretched my comfort zone here and taught me what loving his people really means.

On the road to go see Patients

We visited two hospices, Hospice Tororo and Hospice Jinja. The mission of both of these amazing organizations is to provide care and pain management for people with terminal diseases, such as cancer or HIV/Aids. It was in these places that Allie shined most. She is a nurse in the United States and previously told me that she was most looking forward to caring for the sick. After our visits, she told me that in all of her years of nursing she had never seen anything like the cases that we saw. They were extreme. I did not take many pictures, because I did not feel it was appropriate to take pictures of some of the patients. However, I did get a few of some of the amazing people that we were able to talk with. In both Hospices, we were split into two groups - Jennings and Allie, and Myself and Hannah. Unfortunately, this means I can only tell the side of the story that Hannah and I witnessed.

I will start with Hospice Tororo. As I said, we were split into two teams, Allie and Jennings went into the hospital and worked with patients there. Hannah and I went out into the community and did visits with the Psychosocial team. Hospice Tororo's Psychosocial team is unique - not many hospices have people specifically devoted to the mental aspect of hospice care. Because of this team, Hospice Tororo is able to spend up to an Hour every couple of weeks discussing the psychosocial needs of the patients. This supplements the short 15 minutes the medical team is able to spend due to the demand.

Hannah, Denice, and Ezra

William

Meet the team: Denice and Ezra. These two men have such amazing compassion for their patients. Their job is to spend time with them and work through the emotional side of things. They do their best to work with the families of patients to make their conditions comfortable and even enjoyable. One story they told us was of their patient William. He was an older gentleman who worked hard raising his boys. He now has AIDs and has a lot of pain in his stomach. He was given pain medication, but his real ailment was emotional. He was upset that his sons were not visiting him or taking care of him anymore. Denice and Ezra were able to contact his boys and open the lines of communication. Now they visit him often, checking on his health and bringing food. What an amazing impact the psychosocial team has had on Williams life, bringing his family back together!

At hospice Jinja, it was a very similar set-up except that there is not a separate team for psychosocial. The teams are medical, but they do their best to help with the psychological side of things when they can. As in Tororo, we split into two teams and Allie and Jennings were given the rougher, more graphic route and Hannah and I were given the "easy" route. We saw much worse conditions on this trip than in Tororo. One man in particular stands out in my mind. When we visited, this man was crumpled on the dirt floor under a blanket. He was the skinniest human being I have ever seen. This man had a multitude of illnesses, the worst being Aids and Tb. His family was afraid to take care of him and bring him food because they were afraid of getting Tb. I am certain that he was days from death. Hospice Jinja gave him pain medication and did their best to help the family through their struggle of spending time with him without contracting Tb. Again this was the "easy" route. I know that Allie and Jennings saw much worse.

These visits were tough. But God taught me something beautiful. The power of prayer. Mary Abo, a girl we visited in Tororo is a sister in Christ and so full of faith. She has very advanced breast cancer and can only take morphine for the pain. She also has swollen limbs and a tumor on her throat that impedes her speech a bit. This girl worked hard and bought her own land at the age of 19. Now she is in her early thirties and is in the fight of her life against cancer. It is too late to remove it because it is so advanced. And this girl is so full of JOY! People from her community visit her every day to ask about her. Her aunt takes very good care of her. Hospice Tororo visits her once a week and she is constantly being prayed over. She is so loved and loves so much in return. I am thankful that our paths crossed, however briefly. All she asked for was prayer for her estranged mother. We prayed together in both English and Luganda. She showed me that prayer is the air she breaths. I hope to be more like Mary Abo.

Mary Abo and Me

The main intersection in Tororo and "The Rock"

From these hospices I learned how difficult things can be medically for the people of Uganda. People often do not get the treatment they need until it is far to late and treatable diseases, like Basal Cell Carcinoma, become fatal ones. But I also learned how God is changing things. There is so much more support now for these diseases than there ever has been and I can see good things growing in the medical community of Uganda. The hope that these hospice teams bring to their communities is just incredible because they take care of the patients and their families. They are superheroes!