The Story of "K"

No photos for this post in order to preserve the privacy of this family.

Last month I went to the hospital with my teammate Noelle to visit her neighbor. The neighbor, “K”, was in critical condition and declining, so Noelle had brought her extended family and two young children, knowing it might be their final chance to see her. It was a hard visit. She was in pain, and the machine taking her vitals was beeping urgently as if medical personnel would hear and rush around the corner to save the day. There was nothing they could do, though, and K was distressed by the sound, leaving the room with a feeling of quiet panic as she fought for breath and battled pain. The doctor said that due to chronic lack of protein, her blood pressure was dangerously low and her body was struggling just to get blood around her body.

It’s common for people in Indonesia to go to the hospital and pray with the sick, but I don’t have a lot of experience doing that and felt so helpless as the family looked to us as Christian missionaries to lead them. Internally I felt like, I need someone with medical qualification, or gifts of healing or prayer, or experience sitting with the dying. I am useless! We brought what we could, praying for her, listening to her and her family. When Noelle went to advocate and ask questions of the nurses, I had no words of my own in the face of such desperation, but I opened my Bible and prayed a Psalm over K in Indonesian.

Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit.

 Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people; praise his holy name…

To you, Lord, I called; to the Lord I cried for mercy:“What is gained if I am silenced, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness? Hear, Lord, and be merciful to me; Lord, be my help.”

 You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.

Lord my God, I will praise you forever.

K was in pain and distress the whole time we were there, but when her little daughter was brought in, her face broke into a sunbeam of a smile. The daughter cried when we took her away from her mom, so I entertained her on my lap during the ride home. We drew pictures on my notebook, and she giggled and grinned at me. She is a vivacious little girl, and there was a terrible weight, not knowing if she would be an orphan by morning.

This one family has opened our eyes to some of the realities here. When we found a house for our teammates, over the fence next door were wood shacks with families that we waved at as we cleaned out the yard and prepared the house for our teammate’s arrival. In the years since they moved in, our teammates have built relationships with these neighbors. They are a large extended Hatam family that has recently moved to town and still travel back and forth to villages to see family and maintain crops in fields. Over a year ago Noelle took the family to the hospital when one of their babies was very sick, and in the following hours we watched helplessly and in tears as the baby passed away and the family wept and wailed.

With limited access to medical care before now, and perhaps immune systems newly exposed to diseases, it became evident that severe illnesses were wracking the family. It was partly through accompanying members of this family to clinics and doctors that Noelle became driven to push to find volunteers to open a free clinic on our campus. She realized that many of them were applicable for government funded healthcare, but they wouldn’t have the documents to prove their identity, or they couldn’t pay for the transportation across town to sit in offices figuring it out. And, even with a health card, if they were sick they’d struggle to walk miles in the tropical sun to get to the government clinic during the open hours, where they were sometimes were met with shaming or treated as ignorant. And so, despite health care available in our city, diseases worsened.

One young man was diagnosed with tuberculosis, but after he began medication and felt better, he thought he was healed and returned to the village to tend to his garden. TB requires ongoing medication for months, and without continued treatment the disease returned with a vengeance. He passed away this past Spring, a young man in his 30’s. Many of the young women in the family are already widows, and a number of the children are orphans.

Thanks to generous donor that bought a testing machine, our campus clinic now can diagnose tuberculosis. When K was admitted to the hospital, the doctor told Noelle that he suspected a rare form of TB that grows in the stomach and so doesn’t have the usual lung symptoms. However, the hospital’s testing machine was broken, and the other machine’s in town were all out of cartridges. Kristina was going to continue declining with no diagnosis and no TB medication.  Noelle was able to convince the hospital to allow her to take a sample from K and take it back to our clinic to test. With a TB diagnosis in hand, K was newly on medication when we brought her family to the hospital.

Some of you that see my social media may have prayed with me that night and the next day as K remained in critical condition. Knowing that she’d just started medication that could heal her, I begged God to miraculously sustain her life for a few days, long enough for the medication to begin to fight the TB.

After a few days K’s blood pressure remained dangerously low, but her breathing improved and she was moved to a regular room. We brought food and prayed again, and this time the room was full of family members, many of them sleeping on the floor barefoot and without money to buy food. After two weeks the doctor said that although still in severe condition, Kristina had improved. This time when we came in, she was sitting up and met us with an enormous smile, proudly showing that her stomach was not as swollen. She was well enough to be tired of the hospital and wanting to go home. The nurse had helped her walk around the hallway to regain some strength, but her blood pressure still dangerously dropped whenever she got off the IV.

Noelle had taken a photo of K’s two kids playing on Noelle’s porch and had it printed so that K would be able to see her children and be encouraged thinking of healing and coming home to them. When Noelle pulled out the photo , K took one look and burst into tears, holding onto both of our arms and totally overwhelmed by emotion. It was just the sweetest thing, seeing her and her smile and growing strength. Together we all prayed again, and the room was filled with an atmosphere of joy, and we left with hope and tender hearts full of praise.

K is home now!

The testing done by the clinic’s new TB machine may well have saved her life, but most certainly God answered prayers and sustained her through multiple days in critical condition.

Our hope is to walk with TB patients through not just medication, but in relational support, patient education, and nutrition packets to help combat the nutritional deficits that worsen the disease progression. Our hope and prayer is that K will successfully complete treatment and be a witness to their community of the value of fighting for treatment and completing it. Intervention now could help save a generation in this family that is currently being ravaged by disease and malnutrition.