Little Carlos; Kristina's Run

Carlos is a little 9-month-old who presented to us a few days ago.  His mother gave me permission to publish his picture and story on our blog.  He had been having fevers, and, as you can see in the picture, a bad infection of some sort that seemed to be eating his nose.  Even more worrisome was his extreme malnutrition.  This little guy weighed in at about 9 pounds on his admission, which is about half of what he should have weighed.  It was difficult and sad to see his tiny little arms and legs, which consisted of nothing but bone covered with a bit of skin.

Carlos had already seen a couple of docs here in Ecuador, but had not gotten any better.  We were thinking that his nose problem was a result of a bacterial infection or a parasitic infection called Leishmaniasis.  We sent a tiny biopsy to look for the parasite, and in the meantime, his nose did seem to get a little better with antibiotics.  He also gained 2 pounds in his first week on a high calorie diet (the picture above is his "after" picture).

Carlos has a few tests pending to help us to know more about his condition.  He still has a long way to go before he's out of the woods.  In the meantime, he would appreciate your prayers as he tries to gain some weight and fight off this difficult infection.

You may or may not know that Kristina has developed into quite the runner.  I have to try to keep running some as well, primarily so that I'll be able to catch my wife.  While out on a 4-mile tempo run a couple of days ago, Kristina was met by an unexpected visitor who left a nice souvenir on her calf.  As you might have guessed by the picture below, the visitor was a pretty good-sized dog who was surprised at seeing such a fast runner going by.

We washed the fang marks out really well, and Kristina began antibiotics to prevent infection.  She's also had to get some shots to make sure that she's properly protected against rabies, though I've not heard of a case of rabies here outside of the deep jungle.  Kristina's had a great attitude about the whole thing, but she says that she'll make sure to run on the other side of the road when she passes that house the next time.