Advocating

Lately, Andy’s been in trouble for being “lazy”. He’s graduating a year early to start college in the fall and he really needs to be doing extra school work, not sleeping in. I have literally shaken his slumbering body and yelled in his ear to wake him only to watch him flop around, unresponsive. “What in the world is wrong with you? Your brother never even did this, and he pulled some doozies!” That’s what it was like in our house—for weeks. Then we discovered that he has mononucleosis. Wow, did I feel guilty! Not only did he feel terrible, but we were harassing him on top of it. Our family doctor thought his throat was too bad to be classified as just mono, so she sent out a culture and told us to go home and wait for the results, which could take a couple of days. Within twenty-four hours, though, we were in the hospital emergency room because his tonsils had swollen so much he was having trouble breathing. The kid was sick. 

He was admitted for observation and kept for five days until the swelling finally went down. During that time we had to advocate aggressively on a couple of occasions. Since the hospital doesn’t allow children to visit, John and I were constantly trading out to be with Ben at home. I happened to be with Andy when most of the doctors came to his room. The first was the hospitalist, who I will call the doc. He reiterated what both our family doctor and the ER doctor said, that Andy appeared to have a secondary infection. The throat culture hadn’t come back yet and, because he couldn’t eat or even drink, he was started on IV fluids, including a steroid and a strong antibiotic. (You may remember that Jonah was diagnosed with malaria seven months after being home from Malawi. Not knowing what was wrong with him, the doctors were bracing us for the worst and at the same time refusing to test for endemic African diseases. After a cry of malpractice, they agreed and found that he indeed had malaria. Treatment immediately reversed his symptoms and saved his life.) Andy’s situation felt eerily similar, so we wanted those same tests. Even after I relayed Jonah’s story to the doc, he scoffed and patronized, “This is not Burger King. You can’t just order what you want.” God gave me the strength to maintain my composure but my determination was only increased, and our intense debate continued until John joined the conversation through speaker phone. I introduced the doc as the man who refused to test for malaria. Needless to say, John started in with a discourse that parroted mine, when I suddenly had an idea. “Okay, how about we all agree to check for one thing at a time and as long as it comes back negative and he’s still not better, we go to the next thing on the list?” That sounded reasonable to the doc, and we just wanted some answers, so the first blood draw was ordered. Negative. True to his word, the doc ordered the second test, which would take overnight, so we waited.

The next morning brought another negative result, but Andy had still not improved. The doc came early and admitted that he had expected Andy to be doing much better. He seemed to have had a change of heart and apologized for being condescending, agreeing to test for whatever we wanted. His seemed genuinely concerned, which made me a bit nervous. Was there something gravely wrong with my son? He called an ear, nose, and throat specialist for a second opinion. Hours later, the ENT still hadn’t shown up but it was discovered that he had added notes to Andy’s file as if he had. When paged a second time, he soon entered the room like gangbusters, spoke quickly and turned to leave, when I stopped him asking, “Did you say you came to see my son when you didn’t?” He stopped in his tracks and turned around, offering matter of factly, “If I came up here to actually visit every patient they call me to see, that’s all I would ever do. I looked at his chart. He’s fine. He just has mono and I can’t even imagine he’s in that much pain. He should just go home. He doesn’t need to be here.” I started to remind him that Andy was having trouble breathing and that three doctors believed he had more than mono, when I realized I was wasting my breath and that the conversation was over. Maybe it was divine providence that John wasn’t in the room for his lecture, but I relayed it to him later and he promptly reported the incident, asking for a new ENT. Instead, an infectious disease team was called in. They were extremely thorough but found nothing. Thankfully, over the following long hours Andy’s swelling began to subside and he was able to drink and to eat, and his breathing became much less labored.

In the end, nothing new was detected in any of the tests, so the doctors were obliged to call it a severe case of mono and to send us home with orders for follow up bloodwork and a month of low impact activities. As we waited for discharge instructions from the hospital, John and I went to the cafeteria to decompress. I took one sip of my coffee and broke down in tears. John tried to console me, saying that our son would be fine, but that’s not what was bothering me. I knew Andy would be okay because we were there to advocate for him just like we advocated for Jonah and insisted on the malaria test that saved his life. I knew Andy would be alright because we were there to expose fraud by a specialist who might have sent Andy home without the steroids that ultimately reduced his swelling and allowed him to breathe freely. He’s okay because we were there for him, but what about all the kids in Malawi. I hadn’t thought about them in days, but that’s who I was thinking about at that moment. 

Since we started our program four years ago, we’ve personally known children in the village who have died from treatable illnesses like malaria, asthma, and HIV. They weren’t a part of our program and nobody was protecting them. My heart was heavy with the realization that as much good as our program has done for so many children, there are hundreds if not thousands more that need support. These kids are undernourished and undereducated, but they’re not underintelligent or underimportant. They just need a chance. Andy’s health scare encouraged me to use my education and resources to work a little harder on behalf of those children who don’t have mothers or fathers to do what we do for our own kids. God puts it in us to advocate for the helpless because it’s what He has done for us. It’s at the very heart of the Gospel. There is power in numbers and we’re asking you to get a little more involved by praying daily or giving monthly. Any one of these children that we’re feeding and educating could grow up to cure malaria, asthma, or even HIV. Given the right opportunities, they will work side by side with our kids to make the world a better place. Thank you for partnering with us to advocate for them so they can become the men and women God is calling them to be.

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