Pray for Princess

Yesterday was a very busy day in clinic. I apologize for getting behind in updating the blog. I was profoundly impacted by a little girl yesterday who came in after seeing Dr. Hewitt. He referred the patient to me, since she is a child. She is 3 years old and her name is Princess. The most obvious thing you notice about her at first sight are her swollen cheeks on her face. She was terrified of seeing more doctors, so it took a while to calm her down. Her mom actually knew great English and we were able to communicate pretty well without translators. On examining Princess further, she had enlarged lymph nodes pre/post-auricular (around her ears), axillary (under her arms), and in her groin. Basically everywhere you can put a lymph node, hers are enlarged. The first thing I thought of when seeing only her cheeks was the mumps. At the sight of the enlarged lymph nodes, my heart grew sad. I knew the differential included lymphoma that was widely spread. After seeing how enlarged her abdomen was and feeling her enlarged liver and spleen, it was obvious that she had a very progressive disease. This is just not what you normally see back at home. You only read about diseases like this stage of progression. Thank you, Lord, for the intuition after only reading about it this far progressed. Even at MD Anderson, I don't see it like this. I asked Princess' mom if she believed in Jesus and she did, so I offered to pray. Jodi and Astrid were with me, so we prayed together, holding hands with the nurses. It was the highest medicine we could give. I did refer them to a city, Accra, to see an oncologist.

This Princess in the eyes of our Lord needs our prayers. She is an heir to the throne!