Unknown ending...

On Thursday a mother came to the clinic with her three week old child. Her firstborn. She came into the consultation room just after 9 am. Her child had started convulsing. Guido and I stopped the work we were doing to tend to this child. Fortunately within minutes the convulsion stopped on its own before needing to give diazepam. The child was not febrile or hypoglycemic, so we couldn't find an immediate cause for the convulsion. We decided that a neonate who has just had a convulsion should not go home, but rather be observed in hospital. We don't admit. So it meant referring. The NGO hospital was full. So it meant government hospital. We wrote a referral letter, talked with the mother, she said she would go and off she went. What happened next? Unfortunately the child was not at the hospital on Friday. No one had seen her. Did she go there? Was she sent home? Did she go home directly from our clinic? Who knows. Hopefully her baby is alright. This is another one of those cases without an ending...