Amara Update

So I did call the NGO hospital....
after a few calls back and forth (and a little begging), they agreed to let me send him.

Amara does not live any where near me so then more communication by phone had to take place to get the action happening.

The problem I had anticipated happened of course.....the family were in the middle of preparing lots of food for the Muslim pray day and had no intention of going anywhere. After much persuading (and lots of phone credit), they agreed to eat their food (quickly) then go straight there.

So the journey would have taken about 1 and a half - two hours.

But finally they did arrive (the hospital had called me in the meantime to say they had not shown yet!)

After an afternoon of examinations, tests and XRays....it turns out that Amara has TB of the Spine.

I was so relieved to finally get to the bottom (I hope) of this situation, and it is not all bad news for Amara either - it maybe that with treatment that the effects of spinal cord injury will lessen, although I think he will always have a severe disability now.

So he was referred to a TB treatment center, where the treatment should be free. He should have gone today. I will follow up later this week. He will need to go daily for treatment initially and then less often but for up to 8 months I think.

I just pray and hope that the family stay compliant with this process and can see why they should, for Amara's benefit.

Based on what the family told me a year ago I was led to believe that Amara had broken his spine. At the time I was told it was a sudden onset paralysis, and there had been a fall involved. At the time, I had not been able to refer him anywhere to get XRays as the roads and facilities were too bad and would have furthered his injury.

It may have been that the spinal cord injury was caused by the TB.
I had referred Amara to see Doctors on at least 3 other occasions over the past year, all with frustrating outcomes. It's a shame it has taken this long to get an accurate diagnosis and hopefully correct treatment. In terms of my treatment it would not have varied much, a spinal cord injury acts and reacts the same whatever the cause, but it would have been nice to have prevented it from getting worse.

So, as you can see, with poor history of problem, many a story being told, lack of medical facilities, poor compliance of families..........
it's the children who suffer.

Praise God that finally we have made some sense of this tangle of a story.

Lets hope that all the others get sorted for the sake of the child too.