Apart from her EB, I’d always thought my little girl to be quite healthy. What! With a healthy appetite and a healing body, why would I think otherwise? Until I heard those five words, that is.
I’ve always known I was anaemic, but to hear that my daughter may be too was a bitter pill to swallow. A little girl, barely a year and a half old, lacking iron was unfathomable to me, and yet it makes complete sense. Anaemia is common in EB kids, and as an EB caregiver I should’ve seen the signs when they presented themselves, but I didn’t. Instead, I was focussed on her wounds, that I barely took note of anything else.
Anaemia, if left untreated, can eventually lead to heart failure is what a paediatrician told me today. Not only was I shocked at the news, but I also feared for my daughter’s life, and though I’m not the doctor or hospital type, I immediately decided on taking my daughter for a check-up at the hospital.
In reflecting upon the paediatrician’s words, I realised that perhaps this was God’s way of reminding me that this is what happens to our faith when left unattended. Perhaps it was His way of showing me that we are so focussed on perfecting the physical aspects of our faith that we forget to take care of our internal needs, and thus we remain spiritually deficient. And it is this very deficiency that, if left unattended, will lead to the breakdown of our spiritual hearts, which in turn leads to a lack of remembrance of God.
I’m not looking forward to our hospital visit tomorrow, but I have no doubt that this is God’s way of bringing us closer to Him. In bringing to light my daughter’s condition, He reminded me that a conscious heart is one that is constantly being replenished with the spiritual nutrients that we so desperately lack from time to time.
I’m not looking forward to a potential blood transfusion in the coming days, but I am eternally grateful for the spiritual lesson this experience has taught me and I pray that others may take lesson from it too.
