#firstworldproblems

I'm not on Twitter so I barely understand all this hashtag stuff, but when a friend told me about this one I had to laugh. She said this as our mutual friend complained that her vente starbucks frappuccino was freezing her hand. Wow, life is rough. It's almost funny how often we get complain about stupid little things! I admit, I do it too so I can't judge. But every time I reflect on our minor complaints for the day, I try to keep it in perspective. Something that I confess, I do much better here at Shevet than I do in the States.

For example, emergency takes on a whole new meeting here. At school, "emergency" applies to a wide spectrum of things from some critical moments to more ridiculous ones. How often do we say something like "I'm dying. I need coffee! It's an emergency. I have 5 papers and 3 tests tomorrow!" But at Shevet, emergency is like the events that happened last night. Hewa is one of our Iraqi kids at the house. He's five years old, but so tiny he could pass for a three year old. Not only does this kid desperately need heart surgery, but his platelet count is so low they have to try to boost it before they dare touch his heart. The poor little guy has been in the hospital almost his whole time here. Friday he was discharged to come to the house for a few days before his surgery is scheduled. However, Saturday his teeth started to hurt. For those of you, like myself, who didn't know, teeth infections can have a direct impact on the heart. Strange right? But important to know when working with heart patients. By early evening, his temperature had risen; he was shaking and sobbing. Not good. We were able to rush him to the hospital and the emergency room. On a normal day, Hewa's oxygen level is in the 70-80% range. The normal healthy person's is between 95-98%. When they arrived at the hospital last night, his oxygen was at 30%.  The doctors stabilized his condition and he will stay there for.... well, I don't know for how long. Maybe until his surgery in a week or two. At least until then, he will be close to the doctors so they can attend to his needs. For now, keep the little guy and all the kids here in your prayers.