baby #4
Ciarha. 6 months old. Arrived April 30th. Admitted into the hospital on May 1. And thus starts our journey. You came half alive. Severely malnourished. Diagnosed with a disease called Kwashiorkor. A protein deficiency causing your small 8 pound body to swell. I thought you were mute. Really, you just didn’t have the strength of a voice. You couldn’t open your eyes fully. You had a voodoo neckless tied around your neck. The same day you arrived, I rushed you to the hospital where you were given a bag of IV fluids. Fluids that I had to go and buy, including the needles and tubes. Because the hospital didn’t provide them. She was Cuban, your first of many doctors. She kept praying and praying to God. And shaking her head in utter disbelief. The next day you were admitted into a hospital 1.5 hours away. For the next 17 days. After filling out piles of paperwork stating that I was the only guardian, that I was the caregiver, and if anything were to go downhill, I was in charge of mak