It's almost April Fools and I'm ready . . .

Shhh . . . don't tell my family!  They have no idea!  And certainly don't tell my friend Kim because she'll find out soon enough!  Today at work . . .

Some days at work just don't get any better than this!  Not only was I paid, but I got bonused!  I've spent this week teaching fourteen 13-15 year-olds how to be water safety aides over at ISD 196.  Today I was asked if I could exchange manikin heads after my class had left.  We had four heads that had split down the back and the replacements had come in.  Naturally, my first question was, "What do you want me to do with the "dead" heads?"  

You know where they are right now, don't you?  Hidden in our dog food bin until April 1st because I have plans!  If you have better plans, use my g-mail account because no one here knows it!  Stay tuned - and don't tell!     

Go, God!

Was is just forty-eight hours ago we were praying for four noma patients on the good ship Mercy?  And already, God has faithfully answered our prayers.  Here's what Ali posted today . . .

First, thank you all so much for praying for our four noma patients. I shared your responses with the nurses on the wards who shared them with the patients, much to everyone's encouragement.

This afternoon, Zoe and I were taking out our trash. As is our custom, we stopped by the tent that serves as the outpatient waiting area on our way back to the ship to see if we knew anyone.  We'd been there a little while when I heard someone greet me. Hearing the quiet bonjour, I looked up and saw one of the patients you prayed for, Alpha. It took me a moment to recognize him, since I've never seen him out of a hospital gown. I've also never heard his voice, since he had a tracheostomy while I was down in D Ward. But there he was, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, greeting me with a twinkle in his eyes.

At my look of surprise, he smiled as well as he could with his new lips, gesturing towards town to tell me that he's staying at the HOPE Center now. I handed Zoe to him, and they sat together for a while in the heat of the afternoon. She rested quietly in his lap as he carefully wiped her drool with her bib and then his own on the blue cloth he carried while the two of them just stared at each other in wonder.

God is on the move; our patients are getting well.

Cry for prayer . . .

Sent out by Ali just four hours ago . . .

There are four adults in the wards right now who are undergoing the extensive, painful process of rebuilding faces that just aren't there anymore - Marietou, Alpha, Fodi and Bala.

Sometimes we see miracles, and sometimes the healing takes much longer. For these four, the battle is not just against a lifetime lived on the fringes but also against infection and malnutrition and wounds that just aren't getting better.

So we're going to turn to the One who knows them, who created them and wept over them when they fell ill all those years ago. We're holding a twenty-four hour prayer vigil starting tomorrow (Tuesday) at eight AM our time (four AM in New York) and running through eight AM on Wednesday. The last time I asked for prayer on this blog, it was for the six hundred pink sheets, and in less than a week, all six hundred patients had someone praying for him or her.

We don't have a week this time; starting tomorrow morning, we're storming the gates of heaven on behalf of these precious four. You don't have to pray all day long, but please stand with us as we plead with the One who holds them in the palm of His hand.





(Top photo with Deb Louden.)

From Ali's African Adventures . . .

The other day at work, I met a woman close to my age. When she was three days old, an oil lamp fell on her while her mama slept, burning her face and arm, fusing her chin to her chest and destroying one of her hands. She has three children, and when I asked her their ages, it took almost five minutes for her to explain that the youngest is nearly two, the middle one is five and that there's another boy, too, older than the rest. She can't remember how old he is. She can't do the math because she was never able to go to school.

This other mama sat up straight in her bed as she told me her story, a flood of details that spilled out through twisted lips and over clumsy tongue. I held her hand in mine, her three bent fingers finding their places in the spaces between mine while I thought of my own firstborn, of the thousands of photos, every detail of her short seven months carefully recorded and catalogued and stored away for future reference. I have an entire book of letters I wrote to her when she was still inside me, letters full of the promise and the hope of her.

All this mama has is a lifetime of pain and one bright spark of hope that, somehow, someday, she'll be able to stop begging and get a job selling clothes in the market.

I memorize the lines of her face, the smooth stump of her hand and the thinness of her legs under the blanket. Many years down my own road, I will remember her. I will tell her story, because it's the best way I know to honour her life. And maybe one day I'll be back here in Guinea and I will buy fabric from her on the side of a dusty street in a crowded market.

At the Y . . .

Sat by a friend at the Y today who actually occasionally checks my blog - I had no idea!  And he told me he had seen the "60 Minutes" episode with Mercy Ships and he got it - he now knows why I want to go to Africa and serve on the good ship Mercy!  Because it is beyond amazing!  To God be the glory!

Mamadou

Mercy Ships volunteer plastics surgeon, Dr. Tertius Venter, had rarely seen a condition like Mamadou’s. According to Dr. Tertius, “Mamadou was born with radial club hands, with only four fingers on each hand. The front sides of his hands are underdeveloped and bend downward on an angle. His elbow joints have also been affected. On his left arm, the joint is working fairly well – but, on the right side, the joint is stiff and cannot bend all of the way.”

Mamadou came to the Mercy Ships patient screening day on his own, not wanting to disappoint his family if he could not have surgery. When he was given a surgery date, he joyfully informed his mother and little sister, who came to stay with him during his two surgeries and recovery. 

 

Mamadou’s follow-up surgery, planned by Dr. Tertius, will take Mamadou’s index finger and reposition it to create a thumb so that Mamadou’s left arm will look and function almost normally. Dr. Tertius decided to leave Mamadou’s right arm as is. The only other alternative in Mamadou’s situation was a straight arm without the ability to bend, which would have kept his right hand out of reach to be helpful.

Mamadou has been a diligent patient, faithfully completing his required exercises. Volunteer doctor Lydia Marx shows Mamadou his latest x-rays that confirm that his healing is on track.

Mamadou has adapted to his situation, fully utilizing the functionality his arms do have. He is a successful sheep owner and lamb producer, even with two bent arms. As Mamadou says, “Just think of what I can accomplish with one fully functioning arm and a hand that can continue to help!”

For Mamadou, the prospect of one normal arm and one still misshapen arm does not dampen his determination to successfully support his family. He and his mother met with a local education official to discuss adult learning options he could pursue while also starting his own business.

 

Mamadou is especially grateful to Mercy Ships for seeing him as a smart young person with great potential for the future. Mamadou thanks Mercy Ships for, “giving me hope and courage to show the world that I, like any normal eldest son, can support my family with the many abilities God did give me.”

Happy First Day of Spring!

Today was obviously the first day of spring.  How obvious you might ask?  Well, in a matter of minutes, while walking the dog at noon, I saw FOUR of my neighbors!  It must be the change in weather.  After all, it was 2*F out!  Trust me - we weren't talking about spring thaw! 

8 Boys, 12 minutes . . .

This morning in Sunday School I had eight wild and crazy sixth boys who happen to have an abundant amount of energy along with one very quiet girl.  Our topic was sharing Jesus with people of other faiths and as our lead-in, I shared the "60 Minutes" episode that was on Mercy Ships.  If you haven't seen it yet, here's your chance.  It kept them very quiet for twelve glorious minutes!

I ran.

Yes, I did!  Yesterday, in fact!  For the first time since November 5, 2012, I ran.  I didn't plan on it.  But it was dark out.  No one could see me except the dog.  I didn't even have the right shoes on, but I had been cleared to run so I did.  I even did it like the doctor said.  I walked long.  I ran short.  I walked long.  I ran short.  I walked hills.  I ran flat.  I wore my brace.  And when I got home, I smiled all day long because I had run!  Thank you, Jesus, for healing my ankle and letting me run again WITHOUT PAIN!  Glory! 

The Dump.

Anna Blauw is an ICU nurse from Chicago.  Praise God for her faithfulness and willingness to serve not only on Mercy Ships, but in Guinea.

Going to the dump has been one of my favorite and most eye opening experiences in Guinea thus far. One of my many Dutch friends, Mirjam, goes to the local dump twice a week to do wound care and basic first aid. Last week she brought me a long on what I hope will be my first of many visits! Built on the heaps of trash, are homes made out of sticks, old doors, old metal sheeting, tarps, bags, and pretty much anything else people can find. The living conditions are absolutely appalling and unsanitary. People live at the dump and sift through the trash in hopes of finding anything at all that they can sell. They live, work, construct their homes, and even find food, from what other people throw away. The air is thick with the smell of burning garbage and raw sewage. There are also large pigs, goats, stray dogs, and other animals roaming around. Most of the people in this particular area are refugees from civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. 

When we arrived at the dump the first thing I saw was a group of about 10 or 12 children running towards us.  They have seen Mirjam every week since October and she is a welcome presence.  I was greeted immediately by a smiling little girl eating a partly moldy fish, covered in flies. The kids all showed us small scrapes on their knees and elbows, in hopes that we would have something special for them! Even though they were in no real need of treatment, we handed out a colored Band-Aid or two to quell the masses. They then went playing on their way. It is always amazing to me to see the joy that children have wherever they are. These kids are living in deplorable conditions with literally nothing, yet they are just as happy and content to run and play as any American child! They don’t see the poverty. They are just happy!

    

We made our way through the maze of shacks and trash to the “treatment” room. Each week a man offers offers up his one room home to be used for a makeshift clinic.  There was a dirt floor and two wooden benches, with curtain separating a sleeping mat from the rest of the room. The patients were already lined up outside waiting. We didn’t’ see too many serious injuries, but just very basic wound that had become infected because of poor sanitation and lack of resources. There were some burns from cooking over fires, foot ulcers, and other basic injuries. We also so plenty of people with ring worm, rashes, and parasites. There is such a lack of preventable medicine and resources, that these people have no access to the very basic supplies or medicine at all.  After finishing up with our mini “clinic” (I use that term very loosely) We just spent some time sitting with the kids and chatting with the adults. You can tell that these people are starving to be treated with the dignity and respect that is so often denied to them because of socioeconomic status.

I hope to make the dump a regular hang out during the rest of my time here in Guinea.

Looking Beyond . . .

Deb Louden is a nurse whom I've met on the Africa Mercy.  What an amazing story she posted today.  

 

Did you see the 60 Minutes USA clip? My friend and co-worker Ali spoke during her interview about looking past the tumour or facial defect of a patient and focusing on who they are and not what they look like. I have been able to practice this time and time again and now it comes naturally. When a previous patient this outreach, who’s story you can read here, came out of surgery, most of the nurses said they couldn’t even recognise him and although he certainly looked different, I realised then that I’d practiced looking past the tumour for so long that he looked exactly as I’d imagined he did without the tumour. It was still him. He was still the same man I saw.

 

In the maxillofacial ward we have the opportunity to look past the tumour into eyes pleading for acceptance. It’s not very normal to have a patient in the ward for more than one afternoon before their surgery and the only pre-operative photo taken is for medical use, but one patient came to us a couple of weeks before her surgery because of a medical issue that needed sorting out before she could have surgery. She was friendly and happy to have a photo with a nurse.

I’m sure not how you feel seeing her photo. Stare into it. What do you see?

Do you see beauty and a fighting spirit? I do. This precious patient fought a facial flesh eating disease called Noma when she was 2 years old and has lived without a nose ever since. She has grown up and married and had two children, which she has left behind and come with her cousin to the Africa Mercy for help.

 

I have seen some very strange and mind boggling deformities and injuries over the past 2 ½ years, but it is the strangest thing to see someone completely missing half of their face. Movies like Star Wars have made characters without noses and it always seems weird but to meet someone face to face is completely different, to see inside their face and know what’s missing.

This beloved patient had an enormous surgery to reconstruct her face, using different skin flaps, her own bone grafts, and the insertion of an artificial airway (tracheostomy) while we wait for the new skin flaps to heal and we continue more surgery.

It’s still only the beginning of her healing process. There are more surgeries to come and a lot of healing and adjusting to a new face- not only the physical presence of having a nose but also the emotional change. I can’t even begin to imagine what a huge change that would be. She has been without a nose and palate ever since she was two years old. She would probably never have seen her own face with a nose and now she has one- although it’s not finished yet.

 

The waiting time between surgeries and healing, takes time and is painful. Her dear cousin is a sweetheart. After the doctors’ round one morning, I looked over to see her cousin sitting on the side of her bed, her left hand resting comfortingly on our patient’s chest, gently stroking her soothingly while telling her what we had discussed with the doctors. This cousin is always tender and loving, going the extra mile to care. Watching the two of them interact is sweet like honey.

One of the nurses decorated her bandage. Isn't she beautiful?

Down on Ward D . . .

Some of you may have seen Ali on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago.  She's one neat nurse and here's what happened to her down on Ward D just a few days ago . . .

It was a busy evening with tube feeds and babies who wouldn't eat and more tears than I usually provoke in a single shift (theirs, unfortunately, not mine), but I'm sitting here and it's nearly midnight and I feel less tired than I've felt in months.
There's something about that place that fills me. It's the man with a big bandage on his jaw helping the woman in the next bed to adjust the tube in her nose, holding it carefully for her while the last drops of her feeding flow through it. It's the babies being passed around from one set of willing arms to the next while mama takes a much-needed break. It's the faces taking shape to cover lifetimes of shame and the man who was never allowed to go to school because he would frighten the other children, sitting on his bed, carefully printing letters over and over as he learns to write.
It's all that and a hundred more moments, carefully stored away for the times I start to lose sight of why we're here, buried under the weight of yet another load of laundry and yet another night with far too little sleep.

Ponseti

With a bit better understanding of "foot" surgery, it's time for me to take you over to a post by Nick Veltjens.  He works in rehab on the ship and this is his report on the Ponseti Program - a method of treating club foot.

Since running our Ponseti conference last year we’ve been training seven local health workers in how to treat children with clubfoot...

These guys have really become our friends and I love working with them... The day normally starts with me trying to speak some French and them laughing... It’s a good start to the day...

We’ve also been teaching them how to make the clubfoot braces and they are really doing a great job...

The best thing about the Ponseti program is that so many little kids lives get transformed...

Snow Day!

Sam's district called at 5:23 a.m. to let us know there would be no school today and our district followed with a phone call at 5:30 a.m. - the kids wouldn't be having school either!  However, the Y never closes so a little before 9:00 am., I followed the trail down 35W to work!  

My first class, one out of four children showed up.  His first words to me were, "I'm sick, but swimming will make it better" and then he coughed all over me with snot running out of his nose!  

My second class, one out of four children showed up.  He was suppose to be able to swim half way across the pool without any help or floatation devices.  He couldn't do it on his front or back.  Mom assured me he could do it with floatation devices ON and the Prior Lake Y HAD passed him!  My boss got that one and I bet the Prior Lake Y gets a call . . .

My third class everyone showed up - both boys!  And since I was quite happy by then (my family was sleeping in when I left, I'd been coughed on and boogered and the Prior Lake Y had passed anyone who was cute), I made the boys swim laps in the big (translation:  cold!) pool!

Hope you're enjoying your snow day! (:   

Noma

Noma - say it in two syllables just like it sounds - no-ma.  Now say it like this, "No, Ma!" and that has to be the cry of every person who has it.  Our friend,Keith Brinkman, had this to share . . .

Noma is a disease of poverty.  It (cancrum oris) is an acute and ravaging gangrenous infection affecting the face. The victims of Noma are mainly children under the age of 6, caught in a vicious circle of extreme poverty and chronic malnutrition. We see them come to our screenings with the effects of Noma.

Koto and his uncle - while at the HOPE Center -
prior to his 1st surgery

Noma begins with ulcers in the mouth. If the condition is detected in the early stage, progression can be prevented with the use of mild antibiotics and immediate nutritional rehabilitation. If left untreated, as happens in most cases, the ulcers progress to Noma at an alarming pace. The next stage is extremely painful when the cheeks or lips begin to swell and the victim's general condition deteriorates. Within a few days, the swelling increases and a blackish furrow (trench) appears and the gangrenous process sets in and, after the scab falls away and a gaping hole is left in the face. It is estimated that the mortality rate reaches up to an alarming 90%. So the ones seen on the ship are those who have survived this horrible disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 140,000 new cases of Noma occur each year and of these, a mere 10% survive. That means that 126,000 die each year, mainly in sub-Saharan countries from Senegal to Ethiopia, a region known as "the Noma belt". Reconstructive facial surgery needs to be carried out in a well-equipped and well-staffed hospital. The facial reconstruction of a Noma victim is both complex and time consuming and requires very special skills. As we have specialized surgical units in our hospital on board, we are able to assist with surgeries for these survivors.

I learned more about this disease from meeting patients in our hospital and more recently during a Hospital In-Service training class on a Wednesday evening – conducted by our Chief Medical Officer Maxillofacial Surgeon, Dr. Gary Parker.

Alpha Oumar at the HOPE Center - prior to his 1st surgery

I currently visit two patients – one a child named ‘Koto’ and one young adult, ‘Alpha Oumar’, both from different areas of the nation of Guinea. Last month, they had their first of multiple surgeries which they will need. Please pray for our patients, particularly for those suffering with the effects of Noma and for our healthcare professionals as they care for them.

Please pray . . .

for the ship and crew currently in Conkery, Guinea.  They are currently under lock-down.  There are demonstrations going on in Conkery that have turned from protests to tribal fighting.  No one will allowed to leave the ship until things settle down.  Thanks! 

You have the cutest little baby face . . .

Mamadou who will willingly go to anyone with his lovely sweet temperament.

Ortho patient George with one of his rare smiles. 

Biandu is playing with a doll that is demonstrating the ponsetti method that helps to correct clubfeet.

Meet the famous "Doublemint" twins. Nicknamed after the famous Wrigley's chewing gum adds that featured a set of twins.They turned up for screening in matching green and white striped sweatshirts. Alseny and Alassane both had surgery to correct bowed legs.

How could you resit this cheeky little monkey?

  Thanks, Jodie, for sharing the pictures!