She was 25 years old and nine months pregnant, happily anticipating the birth of her fourth child. Then, cholera struck like lightening. She was admitted early Wednesday morning with severe dehydration.
She wasn’t surprised by my news; she hadn’t felt the baby move since the day before. Losing a baby is part of life here, something to accept and move on from. In fact, she was able to sing to the Lord between contractions, still finding something for which to be thankful.
She progressed rapidly and gave birth to a beautiful, perfectly formed but lifeless baby girl. She had a chance to see and hold her, but also needed to collect herself to recover from this deadly disease so she could return home and care for her three other children.
While I observed her over the next several hours, I cleaned up, put unused supplies away, prepped the infant’s body for burial and made rounds to make sure that the rest of the staff were handling their responsibilities alright.
She was stable, and I could find plenty of other things to do, but God prompted me not to forget her. I went in to check on her about 2:30 in the morning. I can’t tell you how thankful I am that God had me check on her. She was tossing and turning, agitated and cramping everywhere like many of the other cholera patients I have seen when they are on the verge of cardiovascular collapse. Her pulse and respiratory rates were dangerously high. What was puzzling was instead having of a weak and thready pulse, hers was bounding. We confirmed a dangerously high blood pressure accompanied by hyper reflexes, suggesting pre-eclampsia, a serious complication of pregnancy. Was she about to start seizing from severe pre-cclampsia? Or was she about to go into shock? What to do?
Lacking more diagnostic tools, we had no choice but to rely on the Lord to guide us. With His guidance, we started a second IV line and ran in a liter of fluid as fast as possible. She began to respond as we had hoped. Praise the Lord!
By the grace of God, the next afternoon she was able to go home to her children.
How thankful I am that God watched over our little OB ward that night. I consider it a miracle that in the midst of a cholera treatment center, in the middle of the night, we were equipped to help her. He is a personal and loving God who knit her infant daughter together in her womb and knew the days He had for her. He smiled on that mama as she sang songs of praise between labor pains. It would have been very disheartening to lose both infant and mama. He was gracious to us.
I know that the Lord secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy. Surely the righteous will praise your name and the upright will live before you. —Psalm 140:12 & 13
Though He slay me yet will I hope in Him. —Job 13:15
