Many of you already know about the terrible illness that struck my five-year-old granddaughter Zarah in Germany this month. It has been a nightmare for my son Peter and his family in Munich, and for our entire family in the U.S., too, since they really don't know how to help. Zarah got the most deadly form of bacterial meningitis B, for which there is no immunization or protection. It was wonderful that I could go there for two weeks while Zarah was the most critically ill and in intensive care, but thankfully she is still alive. Now she has years of rehabilitation to endure and will remain in the hospital for several months. Last weekend they shaved her head to begin using her scalp to make the first of many skin grafts, and this week they amputed her right foot and the leg halfway to her knee. They won't know for a while if they will have to take more. Her left ankle is being operated on also, and the damage is so serious that they are afraid her Achilles tendon will be permanently affected on that leg, too. Hopefully with good prostheses she will learn to walk again. 

It's hard to believe a young child can be happy and healthy one day, then purple with hemorrhages all over her body and dying only a few hours later. Fortunately no other children in her kindergarten or in our family caught this deadly illness. Since the bacteria are around all the time in many people, it takes a series of many circumstances to collide at the same time for someone to get the illness. I am proud of Peter and little Zarah for coping as well as can be expected. The real blessing is that she can see and hear and remember, so inside her mind she is apparently still herself. Her 7-year-old sister Mimi has been a wonderful help, too, and baby Janek is a joyous delight. When Zarah is finally released from the hospital and starts on the long road of physical therapy, my daughter Dara has been talking about coming over from Oregon to help, fortunately her husband Matt can probably manage their three children for a while. 

I am now back in Romania, and am looking for an apartment in Constanta so I can get back to work. As one might anticipate, I find myself periodically awash in grief and sorrow, but I have been very lucky to be here where I am with people who care and who are wonderful to work with while we survive this trauma. Our hearts must go out to Peter and his family, as their unbelievable ordeals will continue for a very long time. I am grateful to the Peace Corps for their help in this terrible time, they quickly supported my emergency leave and have shown a consistent caring response to our family tragedy. As an "older" volunteer who has three grown children and eight grandchildren scattered around the globe, this is exactly the worst thing we can imagine happening when we volunteer to work for more than two years in a foreign country. I really didn't know how the Peace Corps would respond when I made the quick decision to leave the country on the first plane I could catch, in order to be with my son and his family. I was impressed and relieved when they were so helpful, and also with the followup concern they have shown. This is the most important support we need, I think, especially volunteers like me, who have retired and have large families, but still want to use their experience to help in the world.

If you pray, please send prayers for Zarah, and if you don't I hope you'll send healing thoughts and good wishes because I really do believe these things help. I struggled with what pictures to put in this journal this month, but decided to upload some of my favorite pictures of Zarah Johanna in happier times...