Sunday, May 10, 2009

A Mother's Love


This lady ran barefoot through the streets of Soleil carrying her seizing two year old daughter.

Her daughter, Abagaille, started having a fit out of the blue last Thursday morning. She hadn't had a fever and never had seizures prior to this one.

Mom and her 7 kids live in Beleco which is about one and one-half miles from the pediatric clinic.

As Abagaille seized, this lady suffered. She cried, shook her head, and extended her arms pleading to her God to stop this. But she held on to Abagaelle and kept running.

When I examined Abagaille, she seemed post ictal, and then would clench her teeth and seem to smile. But she blinked when I touched her eyelids and cried when she received an IM injection. Her vital signs were stable.

Abagaille's seizures stopped. Her blood glucose came back at 47. We gave her sips of powdered milk forumla. She looked around and appeared normal.

I should have done much more from a diagnostic workup, but I couldn't under the circumstances, that I should not explain.

Mom was relieved that her terrible seizures had stopped, and I told mom to come back the next morning.

Mom and Abagaielle returned the next morning and both looked fine.

The hundreds of thousands of people in Soleil like Abagaielle and her mom deserve so much more.

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