This is the first Raphael (12 years old), he was brought to Amecet in August 2018. He was very weak, sick and malnourished. He is HIV+ and we took him the same day to the doctor to do tests and to see how bad it was. His Viral load (load of the HIV virus in the blood) was over 3,000,000 (normally it should be undetected). He was really very sick. He got the right medicines and also medicines for several infections. At first we thought that it was going well, until we started to see strange behavior. We took him to the Psychiatric ward and the doctor there diagnosed: HIV related psychosis!! He got more medicines and was now spaced out, so the medicines were changed. I was hesitated about keeping him in Amecet, with all the little baby's, was it safe??? We decided that we would give him a chance, but that we, as staff, always needed to watch him, where he was and what he was doing.... Now, looking back, I am so happy that we made that decision, it was tough in the beginning, but he picked up, got more peaceful, happy, started to eat himself, (we even had to give him a NG tube, because he refused to eat!) Started to play a bit, we had to go back to the doctor several times and the medicines for the psychosis were getting less and less... He wanted to go to school, and we started with half days, we informed the teacher and everything went well!! He was part of the Amun week en he went back home to his father and sister. In February he will go to a boarding school and he is doing so well. I was in the hospital this week and the nurses called me back, they told me that the last Viral load of Raphael came back and it was only 160,000!!! This is amazing!!!
If you compare those two pictures, the one left and the one from last week at the top of this blog, only 5 months difference!! We are so happy this boy has his life back! Of course he has to keep taking his ARV medicines every day, but he has definitely a future ahead of him!
This is the second Raphael, he is 3 years old and lost both of his parents. He has many swollen lymph nodes, very big and probably also painful. We took him directly to the doctor and found out that he is HIV+ so he was started on the ARV medicines. The swollen glands were so many and the doctor thought it might be TB, so he was also started on anti TB drugs. He really feels miserable. He is now 7 weeks on the ARV drugs and 6 weeks on the anti TB drugs and we don't see any improvement. This week we had to go back again to the hospital and the doctor decided that a biopsy had to be taken of one of the swollen glands, to see what it really is, it can be TB, or an infection, but also cancer......
On Thursday, Peace, one of our staff and me, went together with Raphael to Soroti Hospital. Raphael had not given anything to eat or drink since mid night and he was not a happy boy.. He was to be admitted in the ward and on the first picture, you see Peace sitting with Raphael, the ward is at the back. He was given an IV line and got some medication given by I.V. This waiting took 3 hours, just sitting on that bench...Then we were told to go to the theatre and wait in a side room till the doctor came who was going to the biopsy. They would give him anesthesia for the small operation. We waited in that side room for 2 hours and then the doctor was ready to do the procedure, but there was a medicine missing, so I got a paper with the name and I had to go and buy it outside the hospital in one of the drug stores.. I tried at least 6 different places, at last I found it and I rushed back to the hospital, hoping that the doctor didn't start with another patient.. They were waiting for the medicine and after 30 minutes Raphael was brought back to the side room, sleeping, but soon he started to.cry and wanted a banana and water.... We were allowed to take him home after some time and give him the rest of the IV drugs in Amecet. He was happy to be back in his own bed. I got the biopsy in a small bottle and had to bring it to another place, where they take it to Kampala to a special laboratory. We have to wait for the result....Pls. pray with us that it won't be cancer.....
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Wat je voor zo'n klein mensje doet doe je voor God. Dat is je kracht. Ik bid dat dit manneke geneest
yes we will praying for that lovely little boy. And for you all, that the lord give you endurance, to love on those little ones again and again.