Feeding programme and Jitta Bug

One of the things we often find here is that our patients can be very dehydrated, and malnourished. Oral rehydration salts are a very common pre op prescription. It requires the person to drink a pretty vile tasting solution of salts, sugars and water, sometimes a few litres over several days. i can testify that it is pretty grim, after my ill stomach, I was subjected to a small taster of it....yak!!
Another great thing one of our nurses focuses on is the feeding programme. Just this week, one of our babies who's mum had had surgery was in a pretty bad state. He wasn't holding his head up, he looking very skinny, his ribs protruding, his skin wrinkly from apparent rapid weight loss, was not feeding properly, had oral thrush and had blood in his stool. A pretty bleak picture. As often happens, the care of the patient extended to the family. He was started on a feeding regime and various other things, and yesterday when I went to work after only 3 days input, the results were miraculous!
He was lying on his tummy lifting his head, smiling as wide as wide can be, he looked visibly chubbier inn his cheeks and his eyes sparkled. Some of the things I witness here are phenomenal, and are clearly not just acts of human input. There just has to be a greater input for things that happen here...which brings me to another patient...Jitta -Bug...

Jitta is one of our miracle babies. She was just barely a few months old when she came to Mercy Ships. She had basically a hole in her skull, through which her brain was protruding. As you can imagine, if left this way, brain damage could easily occur (if it hadn't already!) It was imperitive that she had this surgery. After a long and complicated surgery, Jitta-bug (so named by us from her actual name Jitter because of how she looks all wrapped in blankets I believe...) was cared for on ICU for some time. Now she is a few weeks on and we are all astounded by her progress. Although we will never really know if she has incurred and developmental delay or brain damage until she gets bigger, she is showing amazingly normal 'baby behaviour'. She crys, eats, drinks, follows people and moves as we would all hope though we remember daily, it is an absolute miracle. We are all watching in anticipation as she continues to get better. You have no idea how beautiful that baby is to all who have cared for her. For a longtime she had bandages between her nose and round her head. Those are gone now, revealing an absolutely beautiful baby, with little evidence of the trauma she has incurred.