how diarrhea and dehydration kept me motivated...

There were many times during my time in Adoka that I wondered why I was there, was I really doing anything worthwhile, was it really worth the frustration?

My last weekend in Adoka kept me motivated and reminded me of the reason that I was sent to start the water filter program.

Nelvia (at right) came from Mkar for a week to work at the hospital in Adoka. She is a GP resident in training and was doing an international placement with the medical team. We were "on call" one weekend to try to give Dr. Aba a break. We spent most of saturday night at the hospital trying to revive babies. This first picture is of Monica, who came in with severe diarrhea and even more severe dehydration. During the evening a nurse had attempted a "cut-down" IV with no success. Nelvia tried an intra-osseus IV as a last resort. This is done by driving a large bore needle into the leg bone. You can rehydrate for 24 hours until you can get a regular IV. Hers went into the tissue, so we had to teach the parents how to feed her 20mL of IV fluid every hour and hoped that it would keep her a bit hydrated until the morning when we could try a scalp IV.

Then it was onto Joseph. He is 9 months old, but not much bigger than a 4 month old. It was at that time that his mother introduced some baby food to him - mixed with stream water. When you see the photos of the stream water, it will be no surprise why he started getting sick.
He stopped growing and became consistently ill for the following 5 months. As you can see, he is severely malnourished, not much more than a skeleton. He had been doing well during the day; eating and playing with the balloon. But sometime late in the night, he took a turn for the worse. The night nurse came to get Nelvia and I to try to intervene.

Joseph's whole body had started shutting down. He was so dehydrated that his eyeballs were dry and they rolled in his head like a doll. His limbs were flaccid - they just flopped around, and he was not responding to touch. Nelvia started a successful IV into the bone and we started to rehydrate. We had the generator turned on so that we could give him some oxygen and had his mother come and hold him.

After a couple of hours he started to perk up just a little, enough to make some eye contact with Nelvia and his mother. We started some blood donated by his mother (after I had to practically beat off his abusive grandmother who was screaming that he was no longer human).

It was during this time of trying to resusitate Joseph, that I looked down at his tiny body struggling to stay alive - and realized HE is the reason I was there to clean the water. Throw the frustrations of working on "african time" and the obstacles of getting the program off the ground... and focus on the real reason I was there. The helpless babes being fed stream water, getting diarrhea and dying by the thousands. I had to keep going for Joseph, whether he lived or died.
Unfortunately, Joseph lost his struggle only a few hours later. His body was too weak to keep going. Monica, on the other hand, recovered and was smiling and laughing the day I left Adoka.
Although I deeply grieve Joseph's death, it was the motivation to keep me going. I don't write this to try to depress people, but to give some hope - clean water will save the future Joseph's from ever knowing dehydration, malnutrition or death.