Testicles

This is 2-year-old Jonathan.  All of his parts are in the right place. I have an update on his health at the end of this blog.

I am not sure that I have every used the word “testicles” in my life prior to a month ago.  And in the last four weeks, it has been a word used in my daily vocabulary. 

Strangely, we have had four boys in the past few weeks who we have discovered in “well child check ups” to have un-descended testis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptorchidism). 

This is more common than one might think, with 1 in 20 boys being born with the problem.  Typically the testis do make their way down to where they are supposed to reside, but if they don’t get there by the time the boy is 9-months-old, surgery is recommended.  Without surgery, the risk increases for infertility and/or cancer.

How hard could it be to have this kind of surgery in Swaziland you ask? Well, not really that hard at all, but there is only one urologist in Swaziland (we are very grateful that he is here!) and the cost is approximately $4,000 USD per surgery/child.  Yes, that means an unexpected cost of $16,000 in the past four weeks for testicles. You can see why the word has been spoken so often in my current circles.  What do we do?  We had a small amount of money in our “Emergency Medical” fund, but certainly not that amount.  But we moved forward in faith, and started with the first boy.

Now I am writing a blog using that word with the hopes that some of you will understand the importance of the surgery for the other boys and will help us out.

Ian and I often sit and look at each other and say, “you can’t make this stuff up”.  And we sure can’t.  And the other thing you can’t do is predict that four of your boys will have undescended testis next year and put it in a line item on a budget for Board approval. Imagine that conversation.

Speaking of testicles, I wanted to give you an update on the rapist that I had the distinct pleasure of capturing in November 2015. You can read about it at http://janinemaxwell.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-rapist-was-caught-this-week-and-then.html

This is the evidence bag that had the phone, machete, and the lady's underwear in it.

Last week he went to court, and while he confessed to multiple rapes while at the police station, he denied them in front of the judge.  The good thing was that the day we caught him, and put in the back of my truck, he had the lady’s cell phone (that he stole from her) in his bag, the machete that he attacked her with and his DNA was on her clothing.  He was found guilty of two counts of rape and one robbery. He will be sentenced next week, but we are expecting 15 years for each of the rapes and then the robbery on top. 

While I sat in front of the prosecutor preparing for court, an old lady sitting beside me described how this man had also raped her a few months before the November case.  These two ladies were sisters.  One, the eldest in the family, and one was the youngest.  My heart broke for them both, and while I think that we should have used his bush knife to cut off his … well … I won’t use that word again in this blog, I am relieved that there is one more bad guy out of our community. 

The guy in the red plaid is the rapist, the blue stripe was the arresting officer.

If you can help with our Emergency fund so that our little boys can get help, please do so by clicking on the links below so that we can proceed with the other surgeries.

In the US click here.

In Canada click here.

Live from Swaziland … Ian and I are having a date day.

Janine

This skin problem is directly linked to Jonathan's severe malnutrition.

PS Update on Jonathan.  Our poor little Jonathan started to lose weight last weekend and so they did another x-ray, only to find a spot on his lung.  They have started him on treatment for Tuberculosis and will keep him in the hospital for the next two weeks to see if he responds to treatment. If he gets healthier, that is great news. If not, it could be drug resistant TB, which is a different problem. We pray for quick and total healing.