Orphan (Di-)Annie Post Script

Dear faithful readers, in answer to your questions:

(1) I had no idea if the snake was harmful. He didn't spit, rattle, sink fangs into me or coil himself around my ankle and cut off circulation, so -- ever my oblivious self -- I didn't ponder the possibilities. Guess I'm learning to "let go, let God" when it comes to things we can't do much about. The neighbors tell me it was probably a black mamba. Oh, well.

(2) I slept very well on Sunday night, as usual. (Of course, Emmah was on duty for both of us...) I am occasionally awakened by a whining midnight marauder who slips through the cloud of Doom sprayed on my mosquito net. Otherwise, it is only worrying about our patients, not our critters, that interferes with my sleep. "What else could we have done?" I wonder, still clearly lacking the all-important wisdom to know the difference.

I was awake much of last night, for instance, because Ritah went home to lie (die?), probably alone, on a kanga/cloth on the dirt floor of her one-room home in Esiola. We could feed and medicate her through an NG tube in the hospital, but we couldn't make her want to live. Tracy, who had originally rallied in response to oxygen and antibiotics but whose lungs unfortunately never cleared, was transferred via ambulance to an ICU in Eldoret yesterday. We will probably never know the outcome. And little Zebedee's mama signed him out against medical advice last evening, although his fever had spiked again. She couldn't afford the $6.50 a day it cost to keep him here.

The sun'll come out tomorrow... Actually, God "makes the sun to shine" every day in Kenya. There's a reason.