Emily Mamani Patzi

Most of you probably know that I have a little bolivian namesake pictured above with her mom outside their house. Well baby Emily gave us all quite a scare this past weekend. I was attending mass at km 9 (Mineros San Juan is km 10) with Kristen and Richard when Emily's aunt appeared and called me over. She told me that the baby was dying and she needed the priest to come and do an emergency baptism in the house. Thus setting into motion a series of events that I am still reeling from. Emily was suffering from diarrhea but they didn't know what was causing it. They took her to the hospital and ran every test you could imagine but they all came back negative. They (the family) also explained that Saturday night she had stopped breathing and wasn't responsive. They had to perform crude CPR to revive her. The scene when we finally arrived at the house was heartbreaking. The whole family was crying, weary, and completely hopeless. The baby was in bad shape. She didn't have the strength even to cry she just kind of half-moaned. We had the baptism (I am the godmother) and called a doctor friend of ours and prayed. It was about all we could do. Dr. Joe said that it was an infection and it just had to pass. No small task for a 5 month old.
The good news is that as of yesterday (Tuesday) she was on the road to recovery. She was drinking milk again and her diarrhea was going away. She is still really weak but clearly a fighter. This experience has weakened me as well and that is about all I can say at this point. I don't know that I could really put into words how I am feeling or what I am going through so for now I'll leave it at that.