5.5.09

Please join me in prayer for Addie today!!

I need a major prayer request from ya'll!!!  It's about one of my babies.  Her name is Addie (well, Adelaide, but we're....I am...calling her addie) and if you scroll back a few posts or so you'll find a picture of her.  She just turned 3 months old.  She has been with us for 3 weeks now.  Her mother died almost 6 weeks ago from Tuberculosis and Aids.  Her father is unemployed currently and caring for his 3 other children.  Addie is too young and sick for him to care for at the present.  He and her siblings visit quite frequently and love her a lot.  She is only 8 lbs and despite the fact that she's eating wonderfully, we can't get her to gain weight since she is so sick.  When she arrived, it was quickly apparent that she was going to be a sick kid.  Her father was unaware that his wife had HIV or TB.  Her immunization card/birth card showed that when she was born, the hospital administered a potentially life saving one time dose of a anti-HIV medication.  It reduces the transmission from mother to baby from 30 or 40% to around 8%.  In Addies, case, I think she's in the 8% category.  She's had fevers every single day since she has arrived except maybe 3 or 4.  Sometimes they are as high as 103 degrees.  We give her their version of an anti-fever medicine, but as she gets it so frequently we are worried about her liver which is already enlarged (along with her spleen) from HIV and possible Tuberculosis.  She has oral thrush almost constantly despite medications (it's a yeast infection in the mouth that is pretty painful).  She has gone through 2 high dose and powerful antibiotic regimen's that have not helped with the fevers.  We are still undergoing various tests.  Her HIV test has shown us that she was exposed to the virus.  We are worried about congenital (meaning she was born with it) Tuberculosis as well.  The mortality rate for delayed treatment in this is 50% when uncomplicated by HIV.  Last week, we did a CBC to look at her blood count and her white blood cell count (that fights off infections) was physically too high to count (and we repeated it twice).  The scariest part is, she has no symptoms of infection, making her even harder to treat.  We are battling multiple things.  She will return tomorrow (after the latest round of antibiotics) for another cbc to see if the infection has improved.  We will have her TB test read tomorrow as well (although most of the time in a baby this age with HIV it will not show anything even if she has it).  We are waiting for her CD4 and viral loads to return (to tell us more about her HIV status) so we can make a decision about whether or not she qualifies for HIV medications.  Here in Mozambique, as the meds are given to us by the government, the children have to qualify.  They are improving these standards a lot, but they are still not up to par and many die as a result.  Please, first and foremost pray TODAY for wisdom in her treatment.  For conclusive tests tomorrow, so that we will know WHAT treatments to start immediately.  She is one very sick little baby and getting worse and more uncomfortable daily!  We have been fortunate so far that we have not had to hospitalize her as she is still eating well and we have been able to manage her here so far.  Please also pray for everyone taking care of her.  I will update you hopefully tomorrow, as I get more information.
 

1 comment:

Amy said...

Saying a prayer for her and you all right now! Take care!