We all have them right? We know they are not in the least bit productive in the general capacity that we carry them but we have them. What if . . . I would have been more serious in high school . . . What if . . . I would have moved to a different town . . . a different state . . . What if . . . I would have not broken up with the one guy . . . or the other . . . Big or small we are given opportunities every day to choose and hope we make the best or “right” choice.
Often as a nurse it comes up as well. What if the patient had been found a second sooner? What if we continued life saving efforts for just a little bit longer. Most of the time we know we have done everything we can and we walk away knowing that. But more than ever I find myself asking “What if . . .” in regards to the many situations I experienced and saw while in Kenya. I know it isn’t productive and maybe I don’t need the answers but it is very difficult to be okay with that!
The big one . . . What if I had made a different decision standing in front of a baby girl gasping for air? What if in my internal struggle between what I wanted so badly to do and what I was encouraged to do from the hospital culture that I was surrounded by, I chose to do differently? What if I decided to push through those boundaries and provide possible life saving breaths for that baby? Maybe I would have isolated myself from the staff. Maybe the baby would have lived, maybe she still would have died. But on this end now I have to live with not knowing if the outcome would have been different and I question still . . . What if? What if I could have saved her life, if I had done truly “all that I could do.”
Then there are the what ifs, in a very large sense of life. What if little 2 1/2 year old Benson would have been born somewhere else . . . almost anywhere else? What if his parents had a better financial status? What if I had been born in Busia county Kenya? What if you were born in Busia county Kenya? For Benson, being born in any country that was more developed, he would have had a simple surgery on day one or two of his life and lived healthily, playing and running about lie an average child. Instead he was born, presumably right where he was supposed to but with that came a death sentence at 2 1/2 years old. It took that long for his heart and kidneys to fail from disrepair. I wont forget the day his parents, not one but both of them, carried him in. His face and eyes swollen to the point he only had slits for his eyes to peek out of. A belly so distended he looked like he could be 10 months pregnant with arms and legs to match. Every breath he took was filled with exhausted effort. This went on for 3 weeks until it was decided the child should be transferred to a higher level of care. Then the parents who never left this child's side. Who cared deeply about their baby and would have done everything they could had to leave his side. It would take 1000 Kenyan shillings for the ambulance to take their child 3 hours away. A ride he would not likely survive. They didn’t have that money but they wanted badly to help their child. So for the first time in 3 weeks baby Benson was left alone. Just hours before he would die. And it was then that this brave child who took handfuls of pills every day, that never seemed to cry although he had to be uncomfortable and scared, cried. A single tear at first, rolled down his cheek. Every few minutes. The energy and breath it would take to cry would be too much for his tired heart and lungs. But then the panic set in. “Mama” he cried . . . He told us he was tired. But he panicked as we helped him lay down, he was drowning and had to stay sitting up. So I propped him up with a blanket against the window and hoped he could find rest and a peaceful transition from this life into the next.
What if Nasir would have been born to different parents? Or his mother would have lived? What if his father would have given up custody, would he have been placed somewhere that would have actually fed him? What if Meshack would have landed only slightly different when he fell from the
mango tree? What if Meshack #2 would have went into respiratory distress overnight instead of when I was working during day shift and not received intervention? What if Mil’s little body had given up only hours earlier than when we arrived and intervened on his behalf? Instead he went from the brink of death to sitting up, alert and eventually discharged home. This list could go on for pages. But then I have to ask what if you or I would have been born there? How did we luck out to be born into whatever chaos we were born into? Could it have been worse? Or maybe better? Maybe my medical care would have been lacking but in general the family dynamics are very different there. Sure there are abuses everywhere but there is a unity in those communities that feels so very foreign. So maybe there isn’t actually one place that is better than the others but trade offs. Those children aren’t corrupted by iPads and cable television. They run and play, laugh and smile from ear to ear. Even with what seems like nothing to the American outsider. Or surrounded by slum life and sewage.
So yes there are “What if’s” in this life. In rural western Kenya, in the richest parts of America and everywhere in-between. There are no answers and I don’t love that. But I will try to live my what if’s as reminders. Life is precious and not guaranteed. And I am not orchestrating much of my own life, let alone the rest of the world. So I have to trust that there is something . . . someone bigger out there who does know why and the the big picture and its not up to me.
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