Prayer request

Today I got an email from my friend Steve Payne in Kenya. Here is part of the message:

Please pray for our philosophy student, Dominic Kithusi. He went into Mater Hospital (a kind of mid-range hospital we usually go to here) about three weeks ago complaining of headaches. They gave him an antibiotic and sent him home. The headaches got worse and they admitted him. Their tests indicated that he had meningo-encephalitis and that there was some bleeding on the brain which was causing pressure (and the headaches). They put him on steroids, expecting him to come around.

His health continued to decline.Finally we got him transferred over to Nairobi Hospital (one of the top hospitals in Nairobi) and they realized right away that he was very sick. The bleeding had continued, affecting more and more of the brain. They wondered in the infection of the meninges was tuberculosis. They moved him to intensive care, sedated him into unconsciousness, and let machines do as much work as possible, to take some of the workload off of the brain. Tests over the last week showed even more serious problems, that there were blood clots deep in the brain and that blood hadn't been flowing properly for some days. The normal treatment would have been to use anticoagulants, but that increased the danger of further bleeding, so they administered them very slowly.

He has been on a ventilator in intensive care for several days. Yesterday the doctor said that his brain appears to be shutting down, and there seems to be little hope. They will run another test tomorrow, but if things have further progressed the way they have been going, they will take him off other machines except the ventilator, and they don't expect him to last long. It has saddened us all very deeply, especially because it was so sudden and because he is one of our best and brightest. Of course, we just celebrated the anniversary of my brother John's birthday a few days ago, so I suppose I'm flashing back to that loss as well. I find myself very distracted and preoccupied, choking up at unpredictable moments (like in the middle of Mass).

I'm attaching a picture of Dominic. He was a very fine young man and the kind of vocation this region can't afford to lose.

As you can see, Dominic is a young man of college age. Please pray for him, his family and the Carmelite community at this painful time.