The ti kay is a little house right next door to the clinic. It is a small, one room house, furnished with 2 cots where patients may sleep if they need to be observed overnight. For instance, when a patient needs to be on oxygen- we can run the generator so there is power for the oxygen concentrator. This way we can lock up the clinic when we are finished for the day and still provide a room for patients who need to be monitored a little longer. On Friday I saw a 6 year old little girl- afebrile but heart rate of about 150-160, respiratory rate of 60, wheezing, coarse lung sounds, and oxygen sats of ... 50%. I never would have guessed her sats were that low just by looking at her. Yes, she was breathing fast but no nasal flaring, grunting, etc... We put her on oxygen, 5LPM is the max flow rate our oxygen concentrators can provide, so we put her on 5 liters. This only brought her O2 sats up to 88%- 90%. I gave several nebulizer treatments, a shot of Rocephin, Amoxicillin, Prednisone, and Tylenol. A couple of hours later we were finished for the day but she was no better so we took her and her mother to ti kay. She did not look good so we told her family that we could watch her overnight, on oxygen, but if she didn't look any better in the morning she would need to go down to a hospital. Early in the evening I went to check on her then later on Jay would check on her again when he went to make sure the generator was running so she could get oxygen all night. She did not look any better. She hadn't eaten or drank anything either. I told the family she had to drink something. If she didn't want to eat that night she would be fine but she had to drink. I also told them to give her evening medication. After that visit I was pretty sure we would need to find her and her family a ride down to the hospital the next morning. When Jay went later on in the evening her Dad had gotten there too. He explained again that we could keep her on oxygen overnight but if she didn't look better in the morning she would need to go to the hospital. The Dad said they just did not have the money to take her down to the hospital, they were trusting God would heal her. Saturday morning I stopped in there before going to Foret market. Her O2 sats were 93% and she had eaten a little and they had given her morning meds. The family thought she looked better, Dad wanted to know if they could go home. So I explained to them that she was a little better than yesterday, but she was still on 5 liters of oxygen. She needed to have O2 sats of >90% without oxygen before she was ready to go home. Jay stopped in later on in the morning and thought she looked a little better to. Early Saturday evening I went to check on her again. She looked better, O2 sats about 93%- 94% so I turned her down to 4 LPM. When I was almost ready to leave the mom asked me if I could check the child she was holding who was asleep, he was sick also. He is her little brother, about 14 months old, and it looked like he had the same thing she did, just not as bad yet. It didn't seem like he had a fever but he was sweating because he was wrapped up in so many layers of blankets. His respiratory rate was 68 and his heart rate was 175. I told Mom we needed to take him to the clinic, I needed an accurate weight to determine his medication dosages. So we walked over to the clinic with him. It wasn't easy to get an accurate O2 sat because he was crying and scared but I finally saw 86%. I gave him a shot of Rocephin also, plus Amoxicillin, Prednisone, and Tylenol. That combination of medications seemed to have helped his sister so I wanted to give him the same thing. We have some rapid COVID tests at the clinic so I did one on the little boy. It was negative. Then back to ti kay. I asked the mom if she had other children. Yes, she had 5 children- and I asked her if they were all sick like this- she said she didn't know because the others weren't here, they were at home. I told the family the little boy needed to spend night here in the ti kay also so we could check his oxygen levels too. Currently he didn't need oxygen but it looked like he had the same illness as his sister had. So they spent Saturday night in ti kay also. Sunday morning before church Jay went to check on them. Both children looked good, respiratory rate was still elevated, but not as much as the day before. The little girl's sats were 92%- 95%, the little boy's sats were 93%. He gave the girl a neb treatment then turned her oxygen down to 1 LPM. After 10 minutes she still had sats of 93% so he left the oxygen at 1LPM. I checked them around 1 o'clock in the afternoon. On room air the little girl had sats of 89%- 90% so I gave them my blessing to go home. They were instructed to come back to the clinic Monday morning so we could check their oxygen levels again. On Monday they both had O2 sats in the mid 90's. God really did heal her... he healed them both.
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