Our Saga with Enrique

It has been long haul for Enrique and he is not even close to being done with his cancer treatments. The last month and a half has been a real eye opener with him. About 6 weeks ago we got him back from the hospital in Quito with a cough and junk in his lungs. He went down hill pretty fast. We had him on nebulizer treatments, oxygen, and IM antibiotics. He ended up back in the hospital in Quito after 6 days of trying to care for him here in Baños. He spent 12 days in the hospital for pneumonia before being released.

We have been trying to make contact with a hospital in the US for him to receive treatment but we were having no luck, and we weren't even able to get decent records to send to them for review. It took two 8 hour round trips to Quito but we finally obtained his medical records and just when we thought we had no options for a hospital in the US, we heard from a fellow in Alabama who had been to Casa de Fe a previous year. He reached out to some friends, and it looks like Enrique will be headed to Mobile Alabama to the Mitchell Cancer Institute. It has been a few weeks since we have been able to correspond with them as our main contact has been in China for the last couple weeks. We plan to relocate with Enrique to try to maintain some resemblance of a stable family for him during the course of his treatment.

During this time we have been working on trying to get Enrique a passport and permission to leave the country for medical treatment. It should have been a 3 day process but it also has turned into weeks. I thought we were getting close this morning as we went to Puyo (3 hr round trip) to finish up with the process. When we got there we were told that they were unable to do anything because they didn't have the necessary equipment (evidently it had to go somewhere else?)

I sit here a bit frustrated and impatient (as usual) as God does not seem to be working with what I deem to be an appropriate time frame. We are trying to plan the summer and fall and we don't know where we will be even within 2000 miles. We know he has a plan and are working on sitting patiently as His plan unfolds.