“The condition for a miracle is difficulty, however the
condition for a great miracle is not difficulty, but impossibility.” –
Angus Buchan
‘No hope’. This is
what Connie’s doctor said, in English, to Karen. The tumor that was growing in Connie’s kidney
had become so large that it was pressing on her other organs and causing
internal bleeding. The hospital had
hoped to be able to do chemotherapy to try to shrink the tumor first before
operating, but it was too late for that.
Connie needed a miracle, and soon.
One-year-old Connie had arrived into New Day’s care just two
weeks earlier, on March 26, only nine days after she had been found at the gate
of her local orphanage. Her abdomen was
very swollen from the large growth in her kidney, and she had needed a blood
transfusion before she traveled so that she would be stable enough to survive
the journey. We hoped that chemotherapy
would be able to shrink the tumor before she had surgery; just three days after
she arrived, however, she began to bleed.
We took her in to the hospital, and could see that she was in a lot of
pain.
A blood test showed that her blood platelet levels were
dangerously low, so low that it is amazing that she survived. She needed to be admitted to the ICU, but
there was no bed available so they gave her a blood transfusion and kept her in
the emergency room for observation. When the doctor examined her the next day,
he kept on saying how serious her condition was; she needed to be stable enough
for chemotherapy and surgery in order to have a chance of surviving. All they could do was continue giving her
blood transfusions.
Then Connie vomited blood, and there was still no bed
available for her in the ICU. It was at
this point that the doctor told Karen that there was ‘no hope’. We knew that her impossible situation was a condition
for a great miracle! Yet we had to make
a difficult decision – to do another blood transfusion, or bring her back to
New Day and just hold her? Eventually we
were able to make contact with the surgeon who had successfully operated on
another New Day child with the same kind of tumor, and she was willing to
attempt a surgery, even though she warned that it would be very high risk. Connie was moved to the surgical ward.
Connie was in such good hands. The medical team decided not to attempt to
remove the tumor at this stage because she was too unstable, and instead
performed a less risky procedure to cut off the blood supply to the kidney
where the tumor was growing. This was urgently
needed because the tumor was growing so fast, increasing by 2 cm in just two
days. The surgery went well, and Connie was eventually transferred to the ICU
after a long wait in the operating room because a bed was still not available. At this point it was a miracle that Connie
was still alive, when the doctor that had examined her earlier had warned us
that she would probably not survive the day, but she still urgently needed to
have the tumor removed. They were not able to take her off the ventilator because the tumor was making it hard for her to
breathe. Surgery was scheduled, but
blood tests showed that she had an infection and her platelet count was too
low.
Through the Easter weekend, which happened to coincide with
a Chinese holiday, Connie remained on the ventilator in the ICU, stable but
sometimes running a low fever. On
Wednesday 8 April, Connie went into the operating room and underwent a
three-and-a-half hour surgery to remove the 1.2 kg tumor. It was successful; they saw that the massive
tumor had ruptured, which is what had been causing her internal bleeding. After almost a week, Connie was finally able
to come off the ventilator, and a few days later she was transferred out of the
ICU onto a regular ward.
Connie still has a long road of recovery ahead of her, and has started chemotherapy. But she is alive, and her life is already
proof of what can happen when we refuse to accept ‘no hope’ as a prognosis.
Beautiful
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