The Beginning of the End

These photos are of the same FFF mother. I took the photo (below, center) two years ago while doing home visits with our team. The photo below that was taken two weeks ago. To keep these photos in perspective, Maria has the worst case of diabetes we have yet encountered in Guatemala. Diabetics that are this fragile have body wasting, frequent infections, neuropathy and eventually, kidney failure. When we first took her into our program Maria’s blood sugar was over 1,000. Despite five years of providing medical care, nutrition and insulin for her, this mother of four is in steady and by all appearances, significant medical decline. The logistics of getting Maria from her remote village to a qualified endocrinologist are as difficult as you would imagine them to be. Communicating with our Guatemalan facilitator, wiring money to Central America for her care and reviewing her medical records via poorly scanned emails requires revisiting the definition of “rural health care.” Given the barriers toward the provision of medical care for a brittle diabetic with all of the health issues that come with this diagnosis, we have done our best. Our board members know that our efforts have extended Maria’s time with her children.

I wish we didn’t love this FFF mother like we do. One of the challenging issues of our work is that we develop relationships with the women in our program. Keeping a business perspective on our work is harder when we have an emotional attachment. Without that attachment, the mutual goals we have with our participants would feel like ink on paper, void of meaning and just as stark.

We are in the homes of our participants monthly. We educate their children. Their successes feel like our own. This particular mom is in our documentary. When she first saw us in September, the biggest thing on her frail body was her smile as she walked toward us. We pretended to ignore her physical decline while our hearts silently broke just a tad.
There is a finite end to anyone with such brittle diabetes, no matter what country you live in. We don’t want to think that Maria is approaching that point, but despite our help, she may be. She would not be the first participant we lost. But she will be one of the most missed. We haven’t given up…working out the finer points of getting Maria to Guatemala City to see a more educated endocrinologist is on the top of our list. But the reality is that diabetes is one of the biggest medical challenges in Central America. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180814101416.htm

Finding Freedom hosted a craft sale at a local Kentucky church this morning. One of the items that sold was a hand-woven pillow that we purchased from Maria as a fair trade product. It was a busy morning and I didn’t have time to tell the buyer how special the artisan who made the pillow was. But the fact that the design was an angel, pink in color and woven into black fabric, did not elude me.