Getting close to discharging

Dear family and friends,

Your prayers are working, and God is healing Anna. She continues to improve and there is even discussion about a possible discharge in the next day or so. She will need to stay nearby Aga Khan in Nairobi at least for another 4 weeks, to have weekly follow-up lab work. The medication she is taking to rid the mold in her lungs can potentially be hard on the liver, so the labwork will monitor that. The medication side effects are still present, but they have lessened in severity, so thank you for praying. She has also been fever-free these last few days, and quite happy about that.

She’s increased her caloric intake, and the other day with a wily look in her eye said “I REALLY want a hamburger right now”. We slowly walked down the halls of the hospital corridor where it dead ends directly into a tasty restaurant (genius design to have a Java House inside a hospital). She ordered and ate (1/2) of a hamburger!

 She’s anemic, but her hemoglobin levels are slowly rising (currently at 9.4). More hamburgers!

 Her pulmonology and infectious disease teams round daily, and have noted her improvement. The respiratory therapist makes visits to perform chest physiotherapy which helps clear the secretions from her lungs, and nebulized treatments open her lungs for easier breathing. The hardworking pulmonologist Dr. Hassanali, who has seen her every day since admission, said they’d send her home with a travel nebulizer and she can continue these breathing treatments outside of the hospital. 

Anna still has significant fatigue, and a higher need to rest. When she is out of the hospital, she will be taking it easy. She is currently napping as I write this. 

 The staff here at Aga Khan are so kind. Even the people on the housekeeping and dietary services teams walk into the room with smiles and a willingness to help out in any way. They bring two cups and enough Kenyan tea for both of us to have tea parties together, and they interact with her in such an encouraging way. 

I’m not so much trying to bore you with details, rather I’m trying to paint a picture that Anna is at a well-resourced hospital that continues to assess her progress and take good care of her. This hospital is even accredited by the Joint Commission International. JCI is a global leader in health quality standards. In America, nurses sweat bullets the day the Joint Commission comes for their rigorous audits.

 

Patrick and all 3 kids arrive from the Kenyan coast today. Serge has supplied the LaRochelle family with a missionary house nearby that they will move into today (Anna is still at the hospital though). Now that the conference is done there will be a network of friends in Nairobi who are already reaching out to the LaRochelles offering support, meals, playdates, etc, so they are in excellent hands. I fly back to California tomorrow, and know that the timing of this trip was God-ordained. 

 

And lastly, our bookclub The Women! We are lagging! We are on Chapter 9, but to give you a picture of the state of Anna’s lungs, we can only read about 1 page before she has the urge to cough. The productive coughing lasts for 5-10 seconds, and then we read another page. Add to that all the different people who come in and out of her room all day and it makes for very slow reading, which of course is perfectly fine. Just no spoilers for those of you who are way ahead of us ;).

 

Overall, everyone is very encouraged by Anna’s progress. The pulmonology team said she may be a case study for them because most people they see with influenza and pneumonia don’t also have Aspergillus. Fun times.

 

Pray for her to get to the point to be allowed to discharge “home”. And pray for that transition, it won't be easy to be with her children but feel so weak and unable to tend to them the way she typically would. It’ll take some adjustments. 

                    and Jesus makes himself known in our weakness

We can see God working here in the midst of this situation. May this time be an ebenezer to who he is and the many ways he continues to show up, as he heals our dear Anna.