Everything That Has Breath

FEBRUARY 27, 2023   |   2 MINUTE READ
DR. CLARK SLEETH, MISSIONARY IN KENYA

Last week, while our inpatient pediatrics team was doing our daily group devotionals and discussing the patients who were admitted overnight, we decided to send an unusual letter to one of our patients. 

Usually when you receive a letter from your doctor, it’s about a bill or some lab results. Perhaps with a label that marks it “URGENT” or “OPEN IMMEDIATELY.” 

This letter is not about one of those customary topics. And I don’t expect my patient to read it for several years.

This letter is addressed to Jayden, a baby in our NICU, who has not yet reached his third month of life. It is a brief testimony to God’s graciousness in his life.

I remember the morning I gave up on Jayden.

The Tenwek Pediatrics Team works to resuscitate a baby

He had come in septic with an intestinal malformation and was taken emergently to the operating room. His heart stopped at the end of the surgery. In the process of resuscitating him one of his lungs popped, necessitating the placement of a chest tube. 

He made it back to the NICU where we started him on IV nutrition and broad-spectrum antibiotics. As a result of severe sepsis—the body’s extreme response to infection—he began bleeding from everywhere and required medicines to support his heart and blood pressure. His lungs initially improved, but then became more and more inflamed. 

Despite maxing out the support we could give with a conventional ventilator strategy, we still could not get his oxygen saturation above 70 percent.

Baby Jayden slowly improving

The ventilator he was on was a newer model that was donated to the hospital. It has a mode that I thought I could try.

There are only a few recorded cases of using this setting for infants, but it was the last option we had for Jayden.

To my surprise, it worked! Over the next three hours, his saturation levels came up to 90 percent as his lungs slowly opened. That night and the days that followed I was just waiting for that “999” to light up on my pager, emergently calling me to Jayden’s bedside because his heart had stopped again. I was dreading that page.

Everything had to go right; a single setback would likely be fatal.

If Jayden were to worsen, we didn’t have other options.

That page never came.

Instead, hour after hour, he hung on. Day by day, he slowly improved. His kidneys and liver recovered. His bleeding stopped. Days turned into weeks, his lungs showed improvement, and we began giving him milk by a feeding tube. We weaned the sedating medicines and he started to awaken. 

Over a month later, we extubated him. He was breathing on his own! The next day his mother breastfed him for the first time. Now he’s been off the ventilator for two weeks and is almost ready to go home.

Baby Jayden and his mama, just after successfully feeding for the first time!

So, we decided to write him this letter. A letter to future Jayden sharing all the things God did for him before he was ever aware.

This is also a letter to all those who helped purchase the ventilators last year.

Look what God has done! Thank you. These ventilators have been a huge help not just in the NICU, but in supporting patients of all ages throughout the hospital.

Thanks,
Clark

ACTION STEP

Give: Your generosity can literally save lives in Kenya. Tenwek Hospital needs crucial medical equipment such as an ultrasound machine, critical care patient monitors, and syringe pumps. This equipment will be used in neonatal, pediatric, and adult cardiac care departments. Save lives at Tenwek by joining the project here!

Author Bio: Dr. Clark Sleeth and his wife, Val, serve at Tenwek Hospital in Kenya. At the hospital, they enjoy every opportunity to pray with patients and their families, to challenge people in their faith, to train African physicians, and to share the Gospel.