Last Saturday I admitted
Kiende
Monica -
a beautiful 9 year-old girl whose
facial
features vaguely
indicated her Somalian origin. Seeing her reminded me of Stella. She was
thin as a rail and one could easily count all her bones. Her mouth was covered
with ulcers and whitish material which made feeding and drinking impossible.
She was very dehydrated. Her mother told me she had diarrhea for 3 consecutive
months and kept on vomiting anything she tried to swallow. Her skin resembled the
one of the old people and was covered with dark spots. Monica was very weak,
with eyes half-closed, and barely reacted to stimuli. The first
clinical
trials were ruthless:
the HIV test was positive
for
both the patient and
his
mother. To tell them the news was, as always,
extremely difficult. I would prefer to do 10 Cesareans than spend those
interminable 30 minutes for the conversation with that despaired woman. She told me that her husband
died two years ago and she was alone since then. Before the death of the
husband, their second child had passed away. She didn’t know what was the
cause. . In the clinic
where
she had gone two times the doctors
spoke only about malaria. Since then
she
was trying to take care of the only daughter
left,
though she was becoming increasingly
fragile
and
often so ill that unable
to go to school.
The collapse started three months ago. Monica started to get watery diarrhea,
persistent and debilitating, and
stopped
walking because of the general weakness of
the body. The mother
took
her to many clinics
and
always received the same
answer: amoeba. Eventually she
decided
to start the journey of
hope
to Chaaria, trusting that we would have done
a
miracle. But it was
too
late for the child.
I
took
the test for white blood cells which were so
low
as to be close to zero.
I
then attempted lifesaving
treatment: lots of fluids (all her
little
veins had collapsed
and
we
had to resort to a blood vessel found
by
chance on the right
temple),
correction
of blood glucose values; antiretroviral
therapy for 'HIV.
But
Monica looked with
eyes
more and more closed; no
more
tears
and the eyes were not even able to
blink.
I
advised the mother to
pay
attention to the flies that
rested
on
the
conjunctiva of the girl
who
could not drive them
away. The woman was
petrified.
She continued
to
pray in a language I did not understand.
Then,
when
the little girl had decided it was
time
to go to Heaven,
her
mother burst into tears and started
rolling
on the floor in front of the room
of
pediatrics. I tried to
calm
her down. I sat down next
to
her on the bed where her only
daughter still laid- now
relaxed
and seemed to smile.
I
tried
to tell her that
now
her daughter would not
have suffered more
and
that she would get help
from
Heaven, but the mother looked at me violently
and
told me that I could not
understand
her pain. I asked
her why she had said those tough
words to me. And she,
returning to cry in despair,
shouted:
"Because
Monica have never entered into your belly!" ... For me,
that
phrase was a whack
hard
to swallow, but
honestly
speaking it is true that I cannot
fully
understand the mothers
who
lost a child, because
for me they are just patients and not ‘the flesh from my flesh’. They
are
a part of me,
but
it was not me who had suffered to bring them to the world, who had
spent
sleepless
nights
when
they were small and could not
sleep,
who
had tried to plan their future ... It 's
true that ‘a pain
that goes through your belly’
is
difficult
to understand from the outside.
I have to accept my limitations and at the same time commit more and more
efforts to commiserate with the sufferings of others that I would slowly make
my own. I realize that the choice to
meet
God in the last,
the
sick and the poor is one of the
few
certainties I have left.
Either
I
start always there,
in
the dedication of a free
daily
service, or risk permanently
losing
the
sense of God and human being.
Either
I start from
there,
with
humility, accepting my
limitations redeemed by the love
that I try to give,
or
I am on the right track to lose faith.
But
I'll
make it. The life that
is
given to us in the colours of those
who
are the losers, who are wrapped
by
the silence of the voiceless,
the life which is embodied in the human
and surpasses us in
every
moment, is our daily food.
While
I am still absorbed in these
thoughts,
all of the sudden Monica's mother tells me she
wants to start the
therapy
for
AIDS. This is really
beautiful, because it means that
she
still
wants to live and
think
about the future. While assuring her that
we
are going to provide her with the medicines
that
would make her feel good for many
years
to come, she, with a wave
of
the hand, showed me another
child,
more
or less in Monica’s age:
she was sitting in the bed,
smiling
in a funny
way, and clearly wanted
us
to understand that she would like to come
close.
I called her and told
her to sit beside the
lifeless
little
body of Monica. She
cuddles
me
and
continues to stare at me
with
a smile indicating affection. Kawira, 8 years old, was
brought
to Chaaria in a state of
coma. We gave her quinine through veins, but she
remained
unconscious
for several days.
Then
she started to improve
until
she fully recovered ... Unfortunately, cerebral
malaria has left its mark,
and
made the girl a
poor
mentally
handicapped
creature. When the parents
found
out about the condition of their daughter, they
simply took flight... and now Kawira
has been with us for over a month. No one comes
to
see her, so she walks around
the
hospital in search of hugs.
Roberto fell in love with this girl and affectionately
nicknamed
her "little ghost", because of her
light
spreading
all over the room and
her sight, a little
empty but always in need of a caress.
Now I have both in front of me: Monica, loved by her lonely mother, did not
manage to return from coma. And Kawira, who
had
returned from a coma,
but
now because she was
marked
by illness, was not loved
anymore
by her family. What a mystery
of life: I have in front of me a desperate
mother who was unable to
save
his daughter, and next to her
I
have a child whose mother left
because she didn’t want daughter with
a damaged brain. More and more confused, I decided to
accompany Kawira to another room where Silvia will wash her. Then, I went to
the office to prescribe the medicine for the mother of Monica who asked me to
let her leave the hospital as soon as possible because she has to walk hours
and hours and wants to be at home when it is still day. Before her
leave,
I set for her the date of the next visit and I try to
ask
another question: ‘Where
are you going to bury your daughter?’
The
response was just as I expected: ‘And where do you want me to
bury
her?
I
do not have even a piece of land,
because after the death of my
husband,
his
brothers divided our little
plot
of land and I was forced to
return to my old mother.
Bury her here, in the hospital, with other children.’ This
is
another drama in Africa. The total absence of
women's
rights in Africa
results in no chance for them to inherit. After their husband dies,
or
in case of divorce, the
woman is left totally bankrupt. Having these
thoughts in my mind, I accompany the body of Monica to the morgue. Kawira
is still following me.
Yes,
you
both are like two angels;
one
already
arrived in Heaven and the other
here on earth is
preparing
for it. How lucky for me to
meet
you!
Brother Beppe Gaido
