Balkissa's tongue looks incredible. This second surgery has been a success by any standards, but it turns out God had bigger plans for little Balkissa than just the reshaping of her mouth.
The first time we met her, the doctor examining her heard something worrying through her stethoscope; the whoosh-whoosh of blood coursing through a heart formed wrong. And although the medicine we practice here is, by most standards, first-world, there are things we can't do. Diagnosing and treating congenital heart problems are definitely on that list.
Balkissa's not the first little one we've met with a faulty heart, and so we made sure she was strong enough for surgery and went ahead, leaving the murmur filed under the category of Things We Can't do Anything About. Her surgery, as you know, went well, but when she got home her tongue split apart again. A failure.
And this is where God's planning becomes beautifully clear.
When Balkissa came back to the ship for her second surgery, nothing had changed. Nothing except one of the anesthetists, a doctor named Paul. Paul wasn't here when we first met Balkissa, first heard her broken heart, but because she had to come back to us, he met her too and heard for himself.
Here's where it gets good, because Paul knows of a charity that does work here in Togo, a charity that takes kids to hospitals in the first world where they can get the treatment and surgery that they need for their heart defects. Today, one of our outpatient nurses took Balkissa to the clinic where they'd do an echocardiogram of her heart and decide whether or not the defect was something that could be treated. If it is, they'll make arrangements for her to fly off to another world, to another hospital (this one on land) where she'll be given yet another second chance.
There have been so many times that I've wondered whether any of the complications we see are for some sort of other purpose, whether God has plans for their coming back to us that go beyond just an infected wound or a broken-open suture line.
Today, I have proof. Proof that the hands weaving this story are so much more skilled than our own, that the heart loving through us is so much deeper than any I could dream up.
And speaking of hearts, I'll let you know what they find out about Balkissa's as soon as I know.