Update on the girls--

Korpu continues to thrive! Six weeks under the loving care of her foster mom Martha, and she is doing great. Her personality is coming out, this once withdrawn girl is laughing and dancing and even playing jokes on her ma! At her follow-up doctor’s appointment last week she weighed 19.8 lbs. That is over a four pound weight gain in six weeks-- a 25% increase!

Mardea, the tiny malnourished girl with the bed sores, is improving slowing. She has been in the hospital for a month now, enrolled in an aggressive feeding program. Now that she is getting proper nutrition her wounds are healing and she appears more alert. She is gaining weight as well, and is up about two pounds already! –

-- This is not the report that I sat down to write today. I received a phone call while I was writing this, that Mardea died this morning. She died! I am shocked. I was really looking forward to this being a happy update. Even though she had been improving on the nutrition side of things, she developed a respiratory infection in the hospital and her weakened body just could not fight it off. I spent most of the day today with Mardea’s foster mom, Doris, waiting at the hospital for her body to be released and then at home, explaining to her friends what had happened. Everyone kept saying “All the suffering, for nothing.” Was it for nothing? I have to believe that we did the best we could for her. But I still feel that she deserved better, she deserved more than this.

I can find some comfort in it though; I wholeheartedly believe that she is not suffering any more. She is free. While I was sitting with her today, Doris told me that another woman in the ward, caring for her own ill child, had a dream about Mardea last night. In the dream Mardea was grown and walking and had plenty of hair and some friends came for her and took her away. Wow. --

Mardea and I last Friday.