More and more children are coming into the clinic severely malnourished. Today Kelly almost cried as the tiny 14 month old, who weighs 11 pounds can back weighing less than yesterday. Se worked on her all day to try to get milk in her and at the end of it all the baby threw it up. At that point it was decided to send her to a hospital , but of course there was no room. Medishared said they were over there limit but Pouchon said that once they saw this little girl they said they would make room.
In the same room a little baby girl lay there with an IV in her arm , also classified as severely malnourished. I left the room only to enter the social service room where Lizzy was splitting up cans of formula so we could send each of the new emergency kids home with three days of formula. It was really overwhelming. Outside our 45 lb, 15 year old was in the feeding program with the rest of the kids. The kids looked thin but next to her they no longer looked thin.
The one thing that made me smile on this very hard day was when I looked out the window and saw Samuel 1, with one of the tiny girls in the feeding program . He is a big man and in his arms he held a little girl and he was carefully feeding her the peanut butter mix, with a big smile on this face. Later he came into the office holding another of his other peanut butter program girls and said, "Look at her , isn't she beautiful, she is going to make it. "
It is hard for me to explain to others what a joy it is to see a child who will die , make it because of all the hard work of PID. But the smile on Samuel's face as he held this little girl expressed it better than I could ever say it.
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