Good luck, bad luck

ZUGUSUG BI LOORA, ZUGUBIEGU N – LOORA

The above Dagbani proverb literally means, 'good luck does not spread, bad luck spreads'. The interpretation of this proverb suggests that we don’t often benefit from other people’s good luck, but we are often affected by the bad luck of others. And this seems to be our experience over the past two weeks. It has been a chain of sicknesses and illnesses which we pass on to each other as a ‘true family’. It all started like this, Samuel had very bad malaria (3+) while Abukari was away in Tamale arranging for maintenance work on our vehicle. It was therefore difficult to get Samuel to the hospital as he was too weak to sit on a motorbike (quite readily available). Finally a local taxi was arranged to convey Joke and Samuel to the hospital whilst somebody took care of Micah in the house. The doctor was shocked that there were so many malaria parasites in Samuel’s blood. He was instantly given a malaria treatment by injection and then later on another infusion was given at our house by a nurse who had come from the hospital. We chose to have him treated at the house rather than have him admitted to the hospital because at this time of year especially there are a lot of mosquitoes about. He has been on quinine for a week now and is really doing well.

Next Joke started to get bad headaches and stomach upsets that really drained her energy and joy. Just after that Abukari found out from the laboratory that he had malaria. And during the middle of last week Micah developed a high fever. Since we were so scared after the experience with Samuel, we immediately started to treat him for malaria but after two days his fever had not gone down. We took him to the hospital for a blood test and no malaria parasites were found, instead he had rather a low HB, but he was prescribed another malaria treatment. However, we were really concerned as his high fever was persisting so we consulted a missionary colleague who is a nurse in Accra (about 700 km distance from where we are). She recommended an antibiotic and praise God, Micah’s fever went down. So it has been several weeks of medication and nursing as we learn to feel each other’s pulses and take each other’s temperatures.

Yesterday (10th June) we again went to the hospital for a malaria test. Samuel and Micah both still have malaria and were prescribed different treatments. Please continue to pray for complete healing.

'the two youngest patients!'

Praise God:

• for our life and the ministries that we are involved in here in Ghana.


• that our health challenges are normalising now.
  

Please pray:

• for our continued strength and health.
• for health personnel in Ghana; the numbers of doctors and nurses are far too low so the work pressure is very high, especially in the rainy season when people fall sick with malaria frequently.