Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Paulo, a life on the streets with epilepsy.

The longer I stay in Mozambique, the more I realise how much I am fascinated with the medical issues and histories of the boys that we work with. The past few days we have been dealing with a boy who has a type of epilepsy. His seizures happen multiple times a day and are fairly mild compared to most epileptic seizures we think of. His seizures are called Absence (pronounced ab-sawntz) seizures. Absence seizures are brief episodes of staring. There is no warning before a seizure, he is completely alert immediately afterward, and has no memory of the seizure. He just carry's on playing cards. Little Paulo doest just stare but also has throws his hands in the air and convulses for a few seconds.

Its really hard for me to watch this little kid have his seizures. I gave him a spoon to drink his hot tea with this morning but out of frustration he grabbed his cup and, of course, had a seizure. Hot tea flying everywhere. My heart breaks at the thought of this sweet boy being on the street, crossing roads and alone.
We are looking into what medicine is available for him but before we can give that to him he needs to be at home. He needs to have supervision and needs to take his medication regularly.

Please pray that we can get Paulo home to his family. Pray that he makes the right decisions, chooses home and leaves his life on the streets. I am praying that we figure out how to help him while he is on the streets too.




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