December News

We had a blessed this year from volunteers visiting to our sponsors making sure that ThembaCare name is mentioned out in the community. We need to say a big thank you to Two-a-Day for the donations we received from their staff for World AIDS Day day as well as the beautiful flowers and also to Pineview Primary for the much needed soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes. They might seem like boring basics but these kind of donations are practical and very welcome!

Last, but not least, to our loyal staff: THANK YOU for every minute you put in to making ThembaCare a success, for your dedication towards our clients and their families. May this festive season be blessed!

October News

This month the workers in parliament dipped into their own pocket and bought ThembaCare Grabouw a much-needed hoist to assist us with lifting patients in and out of bed. This should certainly prevent us getting any back injuries and make it much safer for the patients too! We are very grateful for their generosity.

We still care for 418 clients in and around Grabouw and we have had six patients in the inpatient unit this month.

September News

One of our carers checking a patient's medication

Can you believe it’s just three months until it’s 2013? At this time of year we begin to ask ourselves whether we are on target for all the things we want to accomplish this year. This is how things look so far: Our IPU have had 59 patients this year of which only 13 have died. For us this is an accomplishment and our 16 ladies in the Out Patient Unit are still looking after over 400 patients in the community. We are also very happy to have a smartly painted and improved building to work in.  On top of that some of our staff have been blessed with new children themselves:  Anna, Thandeka, and Jo-Anne have all had daughters and we wish them well with their new additions. So far, so good!

With a short holiday coming up at the end of this week we also just want to say a big thank you to our trusty locum staff. It means a lot to have a well deserved break and to know that the good work will continue while some of us are away on holiday.

August News

August was our coldest month here in Grabouw, with lots and lots of rain and snow capping the surrounding mountains. Despite the hostile weather our home-based care ladies still continue to be true to their calling and are making daily visits to our patients on foot. We have also managed to continue with a lot of refurbishments and this month, thanks again to the Gerald Wright Trust, the whole of the outside of our building now has a fresh coat of paint. It looks very smart!

The inpatient unit has had a mixed month. We sadly lost a patient who gave up the battle with HIV but also happily we were able to send home another patient who had arrived less than a month ago with a very low CD4 of 8. She looks happy and healthy and to see the thanks in her little daughter and mother’s eyes makes our jobs all the more worthwhile. CD4 is a way of measuring the amount of white blood cells your body has for fighting an infection. A person with a normal CD4 is around 1500 to 2000 so you can imagine, when this lady arrived with a CD4 of only 8 we didn’t not know whether she would survive!

One of our male out patients who had been living for years with a tumour on the whole of his back is doing very well after it was surgically removed. His self esteem has grown hugely now he doesn’t have the burden of the tumour. He is now doing so well that he has been able to fly home to Nigeria and join his wife and kids. He was always very involved in our life at ThembaCare and would often be part of our weekly church service. We will miss him greatly but are so happy he is doing so well.

July News

Can you believe there is only six months left of this year?

This month we have been very busy. On Mandela Day we received a visit from members of parliament who provided us with fresh new bed linen. Also, our building as become a bit of a building site – but in a good way! We have been having work done to make our space compliant with fire regulations and the HPCA and to improve the quality of the service we offer. The works have involved making doorways and corridors wider, adding ramps for wheelchair users and extra doors. All this was made possible by the generous people of the Gerald Wright Trust. We have also added awnings to the front and the side of the building to allow patients shelter from the rain and sun. This was funded by Appeltiser and Elgin Freerange Chickens provided some cosy new pyjamas for all of our inpatients. Thanks guys!

However, there is one specific donor who deserves an extra special mention: Uncle Sammy! Uncle Sammy and his wife are both pensioners but have been loyal supporters of us since we opened in 2006. Every month they bless us with tea, coffee and sugar – the drinks that fuel our staff and patients here at ThembaCare. Although this offering may seem very meager to many people it is actually a huge gift to us. It means the world to us to have people who support us consistently with the skills and means they have available and we would certainly be a lot more grumpy in the mornings without our caffeine!

June News

Winter in Grabouw is finally here and with it the freezing cold mornings, evenings and rain. June for ThembaCare Grabouw has been a busy month with a visiting volunteer team from the US going out into the community with our ‘Palliative Care Angels’, in order to experience firsthand the amazing work that the ladies do. This is usually arranged by Village of Hope for the volunteers so that they can have a bigger perspective of the work that is offered to our patients in the community of Grabouw.

We need to update our building to comply with fire and safety recommendations. Corridors need widening, doors need moving, ramps need building. There is a lot to do! Work has started in full vigour, with our area director, Tim Walker, overseeing it all. There has been a lot of traffic in and out of the facility as a result. Many thanks to Tim and the Gerald Wright Trust for making this possible!!

Work also started this month on our long awaited multishade for the ThembaCare stoop and front entrance. This is for the benefit of our In Patients. Many thanks go to Appletiser and our funding manager, Amanda, for eventually making this happen for us. Hopefully, by next month we should have pictures of what the completed work looks like.

Our prayers still this month go out to one of our In Patients who has been very ill. She managed to give us a smile this month and that just gave all of us who care for her some glimmer of hope!!

We would also like to request prayer for one of our teenage patients in community. The young girl who lives with her Aunt left Grabouw abruptly without any referral for continuing the young teenager’s HIV treatment. Our prayer is that all the hard work that our ladies have invested in this young girl will not be lost and that her Aunt will find a way of ensuring that she remains on her much needed life saving treatment.

May News

This month we celebrated Mother’s Day and we were very happy to be surprised by a visit from the Ekko club from Pineview primary school who brought us a beautiful flower arrangement to honor us as mothers and to say thank you for the work we do in the community.

You may remember, last month we asked you to pray for one of our inpatients. She is still in a very bad way and battling with TB meningitis as well as HIV. Please continue to stand in prayer with us. She is becoming less and less responsive and we are finding it hard to administer the medication. We fear that only God can intervene now. Please also pray for her two boys who attend clubs run by Village of Hope and must be very worried about their mother. They are currently having pre-trauma counselling and will need to be looked after by their grandmother unless a miracle happens. Thankfully they do have a willing Grandmother and we are helping her to fill out grant forms so she can get some support for childcare. It is a very sad situation but, unfortunately, not an uncommon one here in Grabouw.

April News

This month we would like to ask you to pray for one of our inpatients. She is a patient we have been assisting since we first opened our doors and is currently in because her second line of ARVs (HIV treatment) is failing and she is suffering badly There are only two lines of ARV medication available through the government healthcare system and once a patient has become resistant to those (either by failing to take the medication regularly or by the drugs just not being powerful enough) then they are only offered other treatments in extremely special cases. Without access to effective ARVs this woman, who is only 36 years old and still has small children at home has very little hope.It is a very sad situation.

The syringe drivers that were donated by Dr Niall continue to be a huge blessing. Another patient has been able to use them and we are delighted to say that he has been able to be discharged home with oral morphine.

We have also been very pleased to be able to show lots of new volunteers the community as they have been going out on daily rounds with our outpatient carers. It is good to be able to expose people from different countries and walks of life to the work that we do and the difficult situations so many of our patients have to deal with in their daily lives. We hope that their experiences will enable them to understand about our challenges and share about the positive work we do here in Grabouw for Thembalitsha.

March News

We have had a mixed month. But highs and lows are part of the job.

Dr Niall has now returned to England but he has left us fully trained in administering pain relief through syringe drivers and, although we have lost a patient this month, at least she was able to pass on with the least pain possible. Niall has also approached the local GPs to assist with acquiring the vials for the syringe drivers and out of hours advice, which they have agreed to do. This is absolutely fantastic.

This month we’ve also been out in the community with our Mobile HIV Voluntary Counselling andT esting Unit. We visited farms, supermarkets and fruit distribution centres. We are thankful for the diligent assistance of our Counsellors and Staff Nurse Cathy, who is currently locuming for ThembaCare.

We are very much enjoying our new car to assist in taking TB patients back and forth to appointments, however we were very worried about it getting damaged in the riots that happened recently here in Grabouw. There was a lot of unrest a couple of weeks ago and ThembaCare was caught in the thick of it because of its location. The widespread protests and political riots erupted this month iagain and this time over the lack of sufficient school classrooms. All roads into and out of Grabouw were blocked, with a heavy police presence everywhere and teargas being fired to try and disperse the huge crowds. A number of community members were beaten and hospitalised. Due to all the unrest and tension in the community, our Home Based Care Staff were unable to safely conduct their home visits in the community in order to see their patients. The situation is now calmer, but remains tense with sporadic random racial attacks. Our Staff are being advised to keep their eyes open and ears to the ground as they continue to cautiously offer their services in the community. Our prayer is that there can be resolutions found and implemented by the Government, serving Municipality, local political parties involved as the riots adversely affect everyone negatively.

Finally we are sad to say goodbye to Christa Titus (HBC Care Worker) who has left ThembaCare in order to pursue a career in Child Care Development. We wish her every success… and for a bit of good news; Sr Joyce & Johan are now official foster parents to their daughter, Anovuyo. A process that has taken over two years!

February News

Well, we are very happy bunnies here at ThembaCare Grabouw because this month we have become proud owners of a brand new car!

We have been in desperate need for some new wheels seeing as our other vehicles are on their last legs and have been spending more time being fixed in the garage than out. It was part funded by the lovely people at the Gerald Wright Foundation (from whom we rent the building that is our In Patient Unit). It is a seven seater so will give us lots of flexibility and allow us to continue to transport our TB patients who are often too weak to walk to the clinic when they first start their medication. It also makes it so much easier for our palliative carers to check up on our outpatients who live in the more remote areas of our community.

We were also treated very well on Valentines Day by the staff of Elgin Free Range Chicken who gave each of us a homemade chocolate heart. Sister Joyce and her team continued to spoiled the patients and staff by grilling boerewors rolls for them at lunch whilst Sister Thandi, Sister Portia and Rozell had their first NACOSA audit.

our mobile counselling and testing unit on tour

This month the mobile counselling and testing unit has been on tour travelling out to farms and around town. It is great to have this facility which makes it easier for members of the community and farm workers to get tested without having to make time to travel into town (this could sometimes take half a day to do if they don’t have easy access to transport). It’s also a good way to spread awareness of ThembaCare and the services we offer.

Finally, we are SO pleased to welcome Dr Niall from the UK. He has arrived to volunteer with us for five weeks and has brought syringe drivers to ensure that both our inpatients and outpatients remain pain free. He will be providing all the necessary administration training whilst he is with us and has also been making himself useful helping to transport outpatient carers and patients. These syringe drivers are groundbreaking for us here at ThembaCare. Until now the only method of pain relief for our patients has been oral. This makes it very difficult when a patient doesn’t have the ability to swallow and we used to have to use music to distract the patients whilst we gave them their meds. Now it will mean that patients who are suffering can have more consistent pain relief. Thank you Niall for making our lives a little easier! – However we do have some challenges in this department. To be able to administer pain relief with the drivers we are reliant upon special vials of morphine which are not always readily available. We have a meeting next week with doctors and pharmacists to try and convey to them the desperate need we have for a reliable supply for this treatment. Please pray that they will be sympathetic to our request.

January News

Grabouw has experienced very hot weather this New Year. Temperatures soared to over 38 degrees celsius and has made it very challenging for all ThembaCare Grabouw staff to work. The In Patient Unit’s fans did little to relieve the patients and the staff of their discomfort, as only extremely hot air was being circulated. The Palliative Community Care Workers suffered the most as they had to walk to their patients in the blistering heat!! Despite this the community team managed to reach their NACOSA patient home visit targets. Well done to them for their hard work and endurance!!

ThembaCare Grabouw had its final Hospice Palliative Care Association (HPCA) Phase 2 Audit on the 1st December 2011 and achieved an overall rating of 94%. Thus ThembaCare Grabouw is now a proud “2 Star “ rated hospice!!!! For those of you who don’t know, this is not an easy level to reach and involves us having to maintain a very high standard of care to be recognised as such. All the ‘I’s have to be dotted and ‘T’s crossed. Many thanks are given to all those involved who worked so hard to help achieve this difficult task and process!!!!

ThembaCare Grabouw’s staff hope that 2012 will be an even better year than 2011 and that we can continue offering Palliative Nursing Care & hope, to all our terminally ill, HIV, TB, Cancer & Chronic patients in the community of Grabouw.