Were lined up for miles . . .
waiting patiently to be seen . . .
Surgeries begin on Monday -
trust me - the crew's way more excited
than scared
but this makes a better picture!
Friday, August 30, 2013
Today, Tomorrow and Forever
We couldn't do screening day reports without hearing from nurse Ali Chandra - here's what she posted on her blog Wednesday night.
4955: the number on the tiny slip of paper that the final patient handed to the nurse standing next to me in the gathering dark this evening. Four thousand nine hundred and fifty-five, and that's not counting the several thousand more who were turned away in the line that stretched up the street and back down the other side before they ever came through the gates or the ones who slipped in along with a family member and brought us their problems, too.
I'm exhausted in every way possible after screening more than three hundred of them from my position just inside the gates, but I need to write while it's all still fresh in my mind. There are thousands of stories to be told from today, hundreds I could tell you myself, but there's one I just can't stop thinking about.
It seemed like every other patient that came to me today was a child on his mother's back, limbs stiff with cerebral palsy. He doesn't walk. He doesn't speak. He doesn't straighten his legs. Every one of those mothers looked to me with hope written all over their faces, and one by one I had to tell every single one that there's nothing we can do.
I've been at screening days before. I've said yes and I've said no, but I've never done it knowing that the weight those words carry are so often measured against the warm mass of a child's body as it curls around your own.
One of those children was a little boy, just three years old. He clung tightly to his mama's shoulders while I spoke to her about his condition. As she started to understand what I was telling her, her eyes dropped to the ground, her voice reaching quietly towards me through the clamor all around us.
Are you a mama?
My stomach lurched as I shared that my baby girl is just two years younger than her son, and her head snapped up, eyes wild, daring me to answer her next question.
Would you leave her? If she was like this, would you leave her?
Her son's eyes, wide and dark and bottomless, stared back at me from behind her shoulder as she held my gaze, her heart laid bare in front of me.
I tried to picture Zoe like that, the polar opposite to everything she is, and I knew in that moment that I could never begin to understand the despair that drove that mama to ask me what she did. Because if it were Zoe who had been born into a body that just couldn't communicate with her brain, I'd have moved back on land, taken advantage of the myriad early intervention opportunities available, enrolled her in special classes and therapies and everything else that would be considered her right as a child born in North America. I wouldn't be waiting for five or ten or fourteen hours in line on a dusty street with seven thousand other people, nothing but the hope of being told there was help to keep me standing.
We stood there, separated by a few physical inches and a yawning universe of experience, and I realized that it was only at the most visceral level that she and I shared anything, that the part of a mama's soul that knows what it feels like to carry her heart in her ams was the single, slender thread that bridged the impossible gap between us.
No, I told her. No. I would not leave her. And you won't either. Because you love him, because this is not your fault, and because you are doing the very best for you boy.
She smiled then, a tired, half-defeated smile, as she retied the ends of the cloth that pressed her son to her back. We both knew that my words held no real weight, that we'd each go our own way after our brief interaction, that nothing would really change. She walked away towards the exit, and I called the next patient forward.
When I got back to the ship, Zoe and Phil met me in Reception. My baby ran into my arms, kissed me, and spent the next twenty minutes telling me all about her day in sweet, unintelligible baby babble. She's sleeping now, curled up in her crib while I listen for her cries, and somewhere in Pointe-Noire there's another mama keeping watch over her baby, searching her shattered heart for the strength to stay by his side.
All I can do is pray that she finds it, today and tomorrow and forever.
4955: the number on the tiny slip of paper that the final patient handed to the nurse standing next to me in the gathering dark this evening. Four thousand nine hundred and fifty-five, and that's not counting the several thousand more who were turned away in the line that stretched up the street and back down the other side before they ever came through the gates or the ones who slipped in along with a family member and brought us their problems, too.
I'm exhausted in every way possible after screening more than three hundred of them from my position just inside the gates, but I need to write while it's all still fresh in my mind. There are thousands of stories to be told from today, hundreds I could tell you myself, but there's one I just can't stop thinking about.
It seemed like every other patient that came to me today was a child on his mother's back, limbs stiff with cerebral palsy. He doesn't walk. He doesn't speak. He doesn't straighten his legs. Every one of those mothers looked to me with hope written all over their faces, and one by one I had to tell every single one that there's nothing we can do.
I've been at screening days before. I've said yes and I've said no, but I've never done it knowing that the weight those words carry are so often measured against the warm mass of a child's body as it curls around your own.
One of those children was a little boy, just three years old. He clung tightly to his mama's shoulders while I spoke to her about his condition. As she started to understand what I was telling her, her eyes dropped to the ground, her voice reaching quietly towards me through the clamor all around us.
Are you a mama?
My stomach lurched as I shared that my baby girl is just two years younger than her son, and her head snapped up, eyes wild, daring me to answer her next question.
Would you leave her? If she was like this, would you leave her?
Her son's eyes, wide and dark and bottomless, stared back at me from behind her shoulder as she held my gaze, her heart laid bare in front of me.
I tried to picture Zoe like that, the polar opposite to everything she is, and I knew in that moment that I could never begin to understand the despair that drove that mama to ask me what she did. Because if it were Zoe who had been born into a body that just couldn't communicate with her brain, I'd have moved back on land, taken advantage of the myriad early intervention opportunities available, enrolled her in special classes and therapies and everything else that would be considered her right as a child born in North America. I wouldn't be waiting for five or ten or fourteen hours in line on a dusty street with seven thousand other people, nothing but the hope of being told there was help to keep me standing.
We stood there, separated by a few physical inches and a yawning universe of experience, and I realized that it was only at the most visceral level that she and I shared anything, that the part of a mama's soul that knows what it feels like to carry her heart in her ams was the single, slender thread that bridged the impossible gap between us.
No, I told her. No. I would not leave her. And you won't either. Because you love him, because this is not your fault, and because you are doing the very best for you boy.
She smiled then, a tired, half-defeated smile, as she retied the ends of the cloth that pressed her son to her back. We both knew that my words held no real weight, that we'd each go our own way after our brief interaction, that nothing would really change. She walked away towards the exit, and I called the next patient forward.
When I got back to the ship, Zoe and Phil met me in Reception. My baby ran into my arms, kissed me, and spent the next twenty minutes telling me all about her day in sweet, unintelligible baby babble. She's sleeping now, curled up in her crib while I listen for her cries, and somewhere in Pointe-Noire there's another mama keeping watch over her baby, searching her shattered heart for the strength to stay by his side.
All I can do is pray that she finds it, today and tomorrow and forever.
MY ONE
Deb Louden, my Australian friend who is a nurse on the ship and who's sister was my running partner in Benin in '09, put this on her blog regarding screening day.
We moved out, under the cover of darkness in landrovers, bound for a school prepared and ready for thousands of people to walk through in search of fulfilled hopes and finally healing.
The people came. About 7000 of them, lining up along the road in the place we had prepared. The government closed off roads and the people waited.
As we opened the gates, we let the patients trickle in through a filtering system. The pre-screeners ask the patient why they have come and they decide, based upon what Mercy Ships surgeons can do, whether we can help them or not. It is not possible to describe how it feels to tell someone that their last hope of a normal life and healing, we cannot give them.
The 'no' patients are walked all the way to the back gate via the prayer station, always so reluctant to step outside the compound where they hoped so desperately to be helped. The 'yes' patients are escorted to registration and from there to History where I was standing, radio plugged in my ear to listen to all that was going on, answering questions of the nurses, sorting out problems and directing patient traffic.
My co-leader and I had an amazing team of nurses who worked so tirelessly throughout the day. But within the first hour of screening I helped out a nurse with the heartbreaking task of telling a young girl of about 12 years that the surgeons on our ship couldn't help her. She immediately burst into tears. My heart had already sunk to the depths of my chest when I had looked at her through my medical eyes. Her abdomen was massively swollen, she was thin and drawn, her skin colour not quite right. It was a stomach tumour the doctor had told them, but he would not help because they had no money to pay him. All because she lives in a world of very expensive or nonexistent medical care this one precious child might just miss out on life, if not for a miracle. So seeing her burst into tears just about dissolved me. The mother looked at me, explaining again, but we have no money and she needs help and now you are here. I looked her in the eye, hoping the compassion in my heart was written across my face, I'm sorry. Even as I write this tears stream down my face for this one child who needed help that we, as Mercy Ships, couldn't give. We can help so many, and I rejoice in that but who is here for this one? Who is here for the hundreds of others like my friend Ali met, facing this moment over and over again in the pre-screening line.
In moments like this it is not my strength that I stand on, for I do not have the strength to stand telling another that his hopes for us to bring healing are dashed.
In the midst of our busy rooms, I stood in the hallway, next to a line of patients and caregivers stretching to the end of the building and far behind me and around the corner. The three rooms I am running are full. One has 60 people waiting, the other two are full of nurses, translators (our day crew), patients and caregivers. I look towards the waiting area and see one little boy out of line. I can stare straight through his bowed legs. Although he is only small the legs are remarkably bowed, creating a little circle that comes together at his shoes.
I turn around with my back to the doorway and am face to face with a woman whose whole jaw is one great tumour, jagged teeth pointing towards the sky. After working on the ship in the maxillofacial ward for the last 18 months this sight is certainly not unfamiliar. I greet the woman and ask her name. It is Natasha and I tell her mine. In the next ten months she will be my patient on the ward and I will have the pleasure of knowing her.
I look down the line and see cleft lips on small babies, little children and even older adults. So many cleft lips in one day I have never seen.
It is this reason, bowed legs, mandible tumours, cleft lips and so many more that make my heart happy and full. Each of these patients will become a part of our lives. I say 'our' lives because the nursing and hospital team is really one big family. We share with abundant joy each other’s triumphs and pray with all our might for every patient.
At 4pm we had been working for 10 hours and after questioning one patient, they told us they’d been waiting outside the gate since 7am. They were tired too. I greeted one lady who had an orthopaedics abnormality and her little girl, who walked with windswept knees down the hall in her striped stockings with no shoes. The woman smiled at me, replying in French, we are tired. Yes I understood.
2pm they had closed the line off outside the compound to new people joining it, but it still held about 1,500 people. Hours later they were still coming through. Knowing we only had limited daylight left we switched to just taking patient details and giving them a screening card for a select date for their specialty. And still the patients kept coming. The whole hallway was filled with people, each holding their precious coloured mercy ships paperwork, a symbol of hope.
It really was ordered chaos but there was never a time out of order or dangerous, despite the number of people in one place. They waited, eager to move when they were called but otherwise willing to wait patiently, like no people in the western countries.
Darkness came and we kept giving out cards, seeing with the light of head-lamps, barely able to see the reason for the patient coming. They will return soon. Actually they already have. There are 60 max fax patients sitting on the dock waiting to be screened.
The numbers are overwhelming. 4236 people came through those gates and this was our first screening day. There will be more in other cities upcountry. More people will come looking for help. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed at that thought, not only for the sheer exhaustion of screening day but because there are so many.
They say you have to start with one, because every single one counts.
Natasha will be my one.
We moved out, under the cover of darkness in landrovers, bound for a school prepared and ready for thousands of people to walk through in search of fulfilled hopes and finally healing.
The people came. About 7000 of them, lining up along the road in the place we had prepared. The government closed off roads and the people waited.
As we opened the gates, we let the patients trickle in through a filtering system. The pre-screeners ask the patient why they have come and they decide, based upon what Mercy Ships surgeons can do, whether we can help them or not. It is not possible to describe how it feels to tell someone that their last hope of a normal life and healing, we cannot give them.
The 'no' patients are walked all the way to the back gate via the prayer station, always so reluctant to step outside the compound where they hoped so desperately to be helped. The 'yes' patients are escorted to registration and from there to History where I was standing, radio plugged in my ear to listen to all that was going on, answering questions of the nurses, sorting out problems and directing patient traffic.
My co-leader and I had an amazing team of nurses who worked so tirelessly throughout the day. But within the first hour of screening I helped out a nurse with the heartbreaking task of telling a young girl of about 12 years that the surgeons on our ship couldn't help her. She immediately burst into tears. My heart had already sunk to the depths of my chest when I had looked at her through my medical eyes. Her abdomen was massively swollen, she was thin and drawn, her skin colour not quite right. It was a stomach tumour the doctor had told them, but he would not help because they had no money to pay him. All because she lives in a world of very expensive or nonexistent medical care this one precious child might just miss out on life, if not for a miracle. So seeing her burst into tears just about dissolved me. The mother looked at me, explaining again, but we have no money and she needs help and now you are here. I looked her in the eye, hoping the compassion in my heart was written across my face, I'm sorry. Even as I write this tears stream down my face for this one child who needed help that we, as Mercy Ships, couldn't give. We can help so many, and I rejoice in that but who is here for this one? Who is here for the hundreds of others like my friend Ali met, facing this moment over and over again in the pre-screening line.
In moments like this it is not my strength that I stand on, for I do not have the strength to stand telling another that his hopes for us to bring healing are dashed.
In the midst of our busy rooms, I stood in the hallway, next to a line of patients and caregivers stretching to the end of the building and far behind me and around the corner. The three rooms I am running are full. One has 60 people waiting, the other two are full of nurses, translators (our day crew), patients and caregivers. I look towards the waiting area and see one little boy out of line. I can stare straight through his bowed legs. Although he is only small the legs are remarkably bowed, creating a little circle that comes together at his shoes.
I turn around with my back to the doorway and am face to face with a woman whose whole jaw is one great tumour, jagged teeth pointing towards the sky. After working on the ship in the maxillofacial ward for the last 18 months this sight is certainly not unfamiliar. I greet the woman and ask her name. It is Natasha and I tell her mine. In the next ten months she will be my patient on the ward and I will have the pleasure of knowing her.
I look down the line and see cleft lips on small babies, little children and even older adults. So many cleft lips in one day I have never seen.
It is this reason, bowed legs, mandible tumours, cleft lips and so many more that make my heart happy and full. Each of these patients will become a part of our lives. I say 'our' lives because the nursing and hospital team is really one big family. We share with abundant joy each other’s triumphs and pray with all our might for every patient.
At 4pm we had been working for 10 hours and after questioning one patient, they told us they’d been waiting outside the gate since 7am. They were tired too. I greeted one lady who had an orthopaedics abnormality and her little girl, who walked with windswept knees down the hall in her striped stockings with no shoes. The woman smiled at me, replying in French, we are tired. Yes I understood.
2pm they had closed the line off outside the compound to new people joining it, but it still held about 1,500 people. Hours later they were still coming through. Knowing we only had limited daylight left we switched to just taking patient details and giving them a screening card for a select date for their specialty. And still the patients kept coming. The whole hallway was filled with people, each holding their precious coloured mercy ships paperwork, a symbol of hope.
It really was ordered chaos but there was never a time out of order or dangerous, despite the number of people in one place. They waited, eager to move when they were called but otherwise willing to wait patiently, like no people in the western countries.
Darkness came and we kept giving out cards, seeing with the light of head-lamps, barely able to see the reason for the patient coming. They will return soon. Actually they already have. There are 60 max fax patients sitting on the dock waiting to be screened.
The numbers are overwhelming. 4236 people came through those gates and this was our first screening day. There will be more in other cities upcountry. More people will come looking for help. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed at that thought, not only for the sheer exhaustion of screening day but because there are so many.
They say you have to start with one, because every single one counts.
Natasha will be my one.
THIS IS WHY WE ARE HERE
Jay Swanson was our "rescue hero" up on Mt. Tiede last summer. Here's his report on "selection day" on Wednesday.
Posted by Jay on Aug 28, 2013 in Blog, Personal Stories | 0 comments
Today I saw the most beautiful little girl. She was wearing a simple purple dress. Worn, faded, but perfect. She was perfect. You could see it in her eyes. They sparkled with pleasure over the fact that she was going to the ship. I hardly noticed the hole where most of her nose should have been. How could I when she was too busy showing off for us? She was adorable.
Over 7,000 people were estimated to have come to us for help today. The line you see in the image above is just a small portion of what came through the gates. There were so many that a prayer request actually went out asking that the influx would stop long enough for us to ensure their safety. A lot of people think that this is why we’re here.
There are so many people that need help. With surgery, we intend to serve 3,300 people and another 20,000 at our dental and eye clinics. We were so excited to find hundreds of potential patients today, people whose eyes we could lock on and ears we could fill with that blessed syllable: “Yes.”
Yes, we can help you. Yes, you can come to our floating hospital.
A lot of people think this is why we’re here. There’s more to it than that.
We’re here because there is a lack of healthcare for the poor. We’re here because these lines keep forming. We’re here because we want to see these lines disappear.
We may be here for the people we can help, but we’re also here because there are so many more we cannot. Thousands came to see us, but only a fraction left with appointment cards. Many were turned away because they are sick with maladies we don’t treat. Others, because we simply are not offering the right surgery this year.
Can you imagine having to turn people away with illnesses no one back home would ever face? Being trained medically, knowing exactly what you would need to do to help the person in front of you, and being forced to turn them away because there simply is no way we can help them here?
The syllable we hate to utter, but have to so often, is “No.” No, we can’t help you. No, you can’t come to our floating hospital.
It is so hard to do. Maybe this is why they take it with such peace and poise: because it breaks our hearts to tell them no. Today I had to tell a father that we could not help his son. Today our staff collectively had to tell hundreds of parents, brothers, sisters, and friends, “No, we cannot help your loved one.”
This. Sucks.
But you know what? There’s nothing wrong with the pain we feel when we say it. This is the empathy we should feel. The moments we start to tear up and are forced to shake our heads, because if we say no we’ll start crying outright, these are moments of deepest reality. This is where we are called to be, to share in the joy and the suffering of our brothers and sisters here in Congo.
We are here to love people who are hurting, people who are broken and beyond our aid. We cannot help them all, but we can share their burdens. Even if only for a moment. This is our privilege.
And in that moment we can show we that we love them, however brief, however helpless it makes us feel. In that moment, they are not alone.
Posted by Jay on Aug 28, 2013 in Blog, Personal Stories | 0 comments
Today I saw the most beautiful little girl. She was wearing a simple purple dress. Worn, faded, but perfect. She was perfect. You could see it in her eyes. They sparkled with pleasure over the fact that she was going to the ship. I hardly noticed the hole where most of her nose should have been. How could I when she was too busy showing off for us? She was adorable.
Over 7,000 people were estimated to have come to us for help today. The line you see in the image above is just a small portion of what came through the gates. There were so many that a prayer request actually went out asking that the influx would stop long enough for us to ensure their safety. A lot of people think that this is why we’re here.
There are so many people that need help. With surgery, we intend to serve 3,300 people and another 20,000 at our dental and eye clinics. We were so excited to find hundreds of potential patients today, people whose eyes we could lock on and ears we could fill with that blessed syllable: “Yes.”
Yes, we can help you. Yes, you can come to our floating hospital.
A lot of people think this is why we’re here. There’s more to it than that.
We’re here because there is a lack of healthcare for the poor. We’re here because these lines keep forming. We’re here because we want to see these lines disappear.
We may be here for the people we can help, but we’re also here because there are so many more we cannot. Thousands came to see us, but only a fraction left with appointment cards. Many were turned away because they are sick with maladies we don’t treat. Others, because we simply are not offering the right surgery this year.
Can you imagine having to turn people away with illnesses no one back home would ever face? Being trained medically, knowing exactly what you would need to do to help the person in front of you, and being forced to turn them away because there simply is no way we can help them here?
The syllable we hate to utter, but have to so often, is “No.” No, we can’t help you. No, you can’t come to our floating hospital.
It is so hard to do. Maybe this is why they take it with such peace and poise: because it breaks our hearts to tell them no. Today I had to tell a father that we could not help his son. Today our staff collectively had to tell hundreds of parents, brothers, sisters, and friends, “No, we cannot help your loved one.”
This. Sucks.
But you know what? There’s nothing wrong with the pain we feel when we say it. This is the empathy we should feel. The moments we start to tear up and are forced to shake our heads, because if we say no we’ll start crying outright, these are moments of deepest reality. This is where we are called to be, to share in the joy and the suffering of our brothers and sisters here in Congo.
We are here to love people who are hurting, people who are broken and beyond our aid. We cannot help them all, but we can share their burdens. Even if only for a moment. This is our privilege.
And in that moment we can show we that we love them, however brief, however helpless it makes us feel. In that moment, they are not alone.
Monday, August 26, 2013
An early look at "Selection Day" . . .
Ali Chandra (that nurse made famous by Sixty Minutes!) posted this on her blog today. I like it because it gives a bit of info on what will be taking place over the next 48 hours or so in Pointe Noire, Congo with the Africa Mercy crew.
On Wednesday, my card will serve to keep track of me, to give our security team a quick way to know who's on site during a day when the vast majority of the ship's crew will find themselves on the sandy ground there at one point or another.
But I'm not the only one who gets one. I know they don't look like much, but these cards are the same ones we'll use when we write down the information about our new patients, when we decide on a date for surgery or further screening and hand them the promise of a new life, carefully printed on a label stuck to a little rectangle of yellow plastic.
I'm holding mine right now; it feels like nothing, and yet on Wednesday these cards will carry all the tremendous weight of hope and fear and longing. There will be hundreds, maybe thousands of hands reaching for them, and we have been tasked with deciding whose fingers will close around one and whose will go home empty. It's an enormous responsibility, one that none of us takes lightly, and I'm feeling all the usual emotions as I prepare for the day, anticipation and apprehension fighting for the upper hand just like they always do.
During our briefing this morning, Kirstie, the Ward Supervisor, reminded us of the truth of the thing, no matter how overwhelming the need might seem. We're not called to save the world on Wednesday. We're called to be faithful to the ones God has placed in front of us.
I can't wait to see who's in that line. I can't wait to shake their hands and look into their eyes and listen to their stories. Most of all, I can't wait to send them through to see the surgeons, where, hope against hope, they'll be handed a yellow card of their very own.
And I know you don't have a card, but we need you there, too. We need you storming the gates of heaven on our behalf as we make what are, quite literally, life and death decisions. The first patients will probably start lining up sometime tomorrow; we will have nurses and security staff on site all night to pre-screen patients in the line and keep order, so please pray for safety and protection. We can't do it alone.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Just for fun . . .
Someone at our house had a lot of fun today
with her fingernails . . .
don't they look great?
Friday, August 23, 2013
Last.
Some of the crew aboard the Africa Mercy have been doing "Five Minute Friday" with thegypsymama. Every week a word is given and they spend five minutes writing on that word. This week the word is last. Take a few minutes to read what one of the nurses, Michelle wrote about "last".
This coming Wednesday, 8/28/13, Mercy Ships will hold the screening/ selection day. Everyone on the ship, every last person will get up before the sunrise to participate in this event. Each of us will have a role to play. Every last role will be equally important for this day to be successful. There is no role that is too small or too unimportant. For we all know that to be first, you must be last.
The people of Congo will probably start lining up the night before screening. Someone will be first in line when the gate opens Wednesday morning. He will be in and out in a timely fashion, hopefully with a coveted yellow appointment card to return. This won’t be the last time we see him.
Most everyone else will wait all day to be seen. We will see each and every person who comes to the gate. We won’t leave until the very last person in the line has been seen. Whoever that last person turns out to be is as equally important as the man who arrived first.
So I pray they come. I pray they come by the thousands. I pray for the ones who think we are their last hope to find us. God has prepared us for this day. God will give us the strength we need to wait for every last person he has called for this day. We have no other choice. I can’t wait to see how God will pour out his love on his people. I can’t wait to see their faces when they realize they aren’t last anymore.
STOP
Please join us in praying for the people who will come for screening. Pray for us to be able to say yes more than no. Pray for the ones we can help. Pray more for the ones we can’t help. Pray for all of us to be strong and courageous. Thanks!
His… Michelle
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Appointment Reminder: August 28th
This is the gate. Ici c’est la porte principale.
The ship will see several thousand people next Wednesday. Their waiting started years ago.
Here’s how:
Adapted from Catherine Murray's blog
A week from today, several thousand
people will be waiting for this gate to open. They will be watching from
this exact vantage point. They will have been waiting for hours; some
will have arrived the night before. For many, Mercy Ships Screening Day
will be the first time they’ve ever seen a doctor.
Screening Day can be overwhelming. The magnitude of need will always be
incomprehensible. When 350+ crew arrive on site before sunrise, they’ll
already be outnumbered by those standing in line.
So to level the head count, come help. Yes, make an appointment on August 28th to be at the gate.
Pray.
For the crew and their patients.
For the doctors and nurses as the spend the day making heavy decisions.
For the translators who will be delivering news that’s not always easy.
For the people Mercy Ships cannot help.
& for all of those they will.
With heart felt thanks . . .For the crew and their patients.
For the doctors and nurses as the spend the day making heavy decisions.
For the translators who will be delivering news that’s not always easy.
For the people Mercy Ships cannot help.
& for all of those they will.
Adapted from Catherine Murray's blog
FINISHED!!!
Who Doesn't Like Birthdays?
There's a brown-eyed girl at our house who absolutely loves birthdays! It doesn't even have to be her special day! She's there with her tail wagging, ready to help open presents! This one actually happens to be hers - sense the happy tail!
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Monday, August 19, 2013
Dana Perino on Mercy Ships!
Next week journalist, Dana Perino, former White House Press Secretary, will visit the Africa Mercy on location in the Congo. By way of introducing folks to Mercy
Ships, Dana's blog is featuring a weekly piece on Mercy Ships
Crewmembers and you can read her latest post -- an interview with Dr. Gary Parker here. Here's Dana's blog: http://danaperino.com (I hope!).
Friday, August 16, 2013
The Most Heartbreaking Condition . . .
This story was written by Catherine Murphy, a writer and editor for Mercy Ships.
Above Mariama's hospital bed, someone has taped a picture from the day she was admitted to the Africa Mercy.
Whenever I visit her, I admire it. On that day, she wore a traditional
headscarf and an easy smile -- radiating of timeless optimism. The faded
black-and-white print has a vintage look to it, allowing me to imagine
that Mariama is a woman who lived a century ago.
Because in many ways, she is.
Mariama and I are the same age. She was born in rural Guinea in West
Africa, and I in the urban United States. Mariama was married by age 13
and became pregnant at 15. When it came time for her to deliver,
Mariama's pelvis was too small and the hospital was too far. She
delivered a stillborn baby after three days of labor in her village.
Until I met Mariama, ten years after her agonizing delivery, I had never heard of vesicovaginal fistula (VVF),
a form of obstetric fistula. The demographic of women who need
C-sections but cannot have them wasn't a reality for me. I didn't
appreciate the social impact of VVF or recognize just how many women -- more than 2 million -- suffer from it in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia.
VVF is an injury of childbirth. When 15-year-old Mariama did not have
access to emergency obstetric care, the pressure of the fetus and the
trauma of the obstructed birth created a hole in the wall between her
vagina and bladder. Without surgery, Mariama will leak urine
continuously, as she has for the past decade. Because the odor of
leaking body fluid is powerful, the social stigma of VVF is harsh. When
it became evident that Mariama's condition was not going to correct
itself, her husband left.
Mariama tells me the story of her delivery with mixed emotions --
grief for the child she lost, and gratitude for the fact she lived. VVF
is the mark of a woman who did not die in childbirth; it is endured by the survivors.
In the United States, stories like Mariama's haven't been told in
more than 100 years. In delivery rooms across the developed world, VVF
is preempted with a cesarean section. When natural labor fails, modern
medicine prevails. Today, VVF keeps company with obsoletes like smallpox
and polio in the shadows of Western medicine, where its symptoms are
referenced in the past tense.
Mariama had surgery onboard the Africa Mercy, the world's largest
private hospital ship. For complicated reasons, she remained
incontinent. I watched as nurses and a translator comforted her.
"I will keep trying," Mariama said. "I have seen other women in here
be healed from this, and I want to be healed. They did not tell me that
there is no hope."
The following week, seven women who had recovered were discharged. As
part of the Mercy Ships VVF program, the women are given new dresses to
symbolize their re-entry into society. The Dress Ceremony marks the
beginning of new life. I worried that a celebration would magnify the
disappointments of those like Mariama.
I was wrong. There was no trace of disappointment in the ward that
day, only happiness. If the discharged VVF women were brides, then the
women in hospital gowns were their eager bridesmaids, giddy with
anticipation for their own big day. There was dancing and singing - even
by the patients kept in bed by their catheters. By the looks of it,
they all were healed. I thought about what Mariama had said to me --
that she believes healing is possible -- and I realized strength of
hope.
Advancements in emergency obstetrics in the developing world are a
long way from making VVF history. According to the World Health
Organization, more than 50,000 women are affected each year. Some of our
partners like Johnson & Johnson have supported Mercy Ships
for 20 years, providing product and educational support for surgical
programs operated onboard the Africa Mercy. Included in Johnson &
Johnson product donations are sutures used in VVF and other surgeries.
This year we will begin a new program with Johnson & Johnson to
build capacity and provide support to local healthcare professionals
within West/Central Africa via the Johnson & Johnson Basic Surgical
Skills Course.
While not every Mercy Ships patient is a success story, we show them
love, acceptance, and a life worth hoping for. The wound Mariama carries
may never be healed, yet the hope she carries will never be drained.
I keep a photograph of the Dress Ceremony above my desk. What I like
most about the colorful print of dancing women is that when I look at
it, I don't see a history of suffering -- I see the future.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
A bit on the Republic of Congo . . .
Sunday, August 11, 2013
FREE GAS!
Did you know that Congo is so excited to have the Africa Mercy there that they are paying the ship's fuel costs for the entire 10 months it's in port? Fact or fiction, I'm not sure, but I've heard fuel alone costs about $200 per
hour! To God be the glory!
Blessed . . .
Friday morning, three friends met us at Sam's school and together we prayed over Sam's room and his building, we prayed for Sam's team, Sam's principal and secretary and Sam himself. Then we prayed for Sam's kids - specifically by name at the desk in which they will sit for the up-coming school year. It was an amazing time, a time in which you could feel the Spirit move. Not only were we blessed by good friends who would take the time to pray with us, but we were also blessed when Sam's principal said to us, "Don't just pray for Sam's room, cover our building in prayer." To God be the glory!
Friday, August 9, 2013
While you were sleeping . . .
At approximately 3:30 a.m. this morning, after thirteen days at sea, the Africa Mercy was securely docked in the port of Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo. Crew will be using the next few weeks to set up and prepare for Screening Day on August 28. To God be the glory!
Thursday, August 8, 2013
God's Sense of Humour . . .
Yesterday afternoon the owners of Cole Cuts stopped by to give us an estimate on what it would cost to trim up some of our trees. While I was talking to Mrs. Cole, she said, "I watched the most interesting program on TV the other night - all about a medical hospital ship." Gee, really? Perhaps on 60 Minutes Sunday night? What a joy and privilege it was to share with her the mission, ministry and beauty of the ship. The best part had to be they were looking for ministries to financially donate to and we could without reservation or hesitation so highly recommend Mercy Ships! To God be the glory!
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
ONE MORE . . .
Zoe's mama and Mercy Ships nurse Ali Chandra posted this on her blog today. It's just amazing. I hope you take the time to read it.
Today is the last day we look back on countries we've already served before setting our sights ahead to Congo. Benin is all a bit hazy in my memory; I had just gotten married, the hospital was running at full capacity for the first time, and I was moving into a leadership position on the wards in the midst of one of the hardest field services I've been a part of here. It's no surprise I've allowed time to dull the sharp corners of some of those memories; they're a little too much to handle on a daily basis.
But I don't want to leave you with heartbreak at the end of this journey; there's been enough of that to last for several sails over. Today I want to tell you one of my favourite stories from the past five and a half years. I want to tell you about Wasti.
Wasti came to us from the far north of Benin where he lived with his mama, his sister and his papa's other wives and children. His sister had something wrong with her eyes, and when Wasti was born with a cleft lip, there just wasn't any money left over from paying the doctors for his sister to even dream of surgery. Wasti's mama was thrown out; a woman who made nothing but broken babies wasn't worth anything and certainly didn't deserve a place in the family.
The situation seemed hopeless.
But then Wasti's mama heard about a ship docked in the port in Cotonou, a ship that would operate on her baby for free, and she knew that she had to make the journey. She sold the only thing she had left, the cow her husband had given her when he added her to his collection of wives, and used the money to make the long journey south with her little boy on her back.
They arrived to the ship at the eleventh hour. We had already filled the surgery schedule and were starting to turn our eyes towards packing up and sailing away when Wasti and his mama showed up on the dock. Our initial reaction was to turn them away. It was too late. Wasti had a respiratory infection that meant he couldn't go under anesthesia. There was something not quite right about the shape of his face, and we suspected (and later confirmed) a neurological disorder that would make the surgery even more of a gamble. The reasons to say no added up enough to tip the scale, and we sent Wasti to a local hospital where he could be treated for his infection.
A week later, I heard that there was a baby on the dock and ran out into the hot night to find Wasti and his mama there, determination stamped across her face. She knew that it was her last chance, that the ship was going to be sailing soon, and she had brought him back in the wild hope that we'd say yes this time.
After much prayer and discussion, it was decided to go ahead with the surgery. We knew that, because of Wasti's brain abnormality, he wasn't going to lead a normal life, and we couldn't send them back to their village with a baby still so broken; maybe if we fixed his lip his mama would have a chance at being allowed back into the family.
Wasti's surgery was the very last one we did that field service, a short half hour in the operating room held out to his mama as a promise of better things to come. He recovered perfectly, watched over by his mama and everyone else that came through the ward.
And when it came time for them to leave, on the morning we sent the last patients home, Wasti's mama took with her more than just her baby. In a little pouch, tied around her neck and hidden under her dress, was money collected from all the nurses and doctors who had cared for Wasti, enough so that she would be able to buy a new cow when she arrived back home. Because it wasn't enough just to do the surgery and send her back to nothing; she had only the clothes on her back when she came to us and would have had no way to provide for herself and her children without the cow she'd sold before she made the journey.
Mercy Ships talks a lot about bringing hope and healing. For Wasti and his mama, it was hope, healing, and a new cow. I think about them often, and every time I remember them I'm reminded that we are not called to help every person in the world. We're simply called to be faithful to the ones God places in front of us. For Wasti and his mama, that meant one more late-night prayer meeting, one more difficult discussion about how to proceed, one more surgery in a field service that had already seen us do so many.
There will always be one more.
And that's why we can't stop, why we're sailing towards Congo right now, ready to drop anchor and welcome all the ones that God is already preparing for us in this upcoming field service.
Today is the last day we look back on countries we've already served before setting our sights ahead to Congo. Benin is all a bit hazy in my memory; I had just gotten married, the hospital was running at full capacity for the first time, and I was moving into a leadership position on the wards in the midst of one of the hardest field services I've been a part of here. It's no surprise I've allowed time to dull the sharp corners of some of those memories; they're a little too much to handle on a daily basis.
But I don't want to leave you with heartbreak at the end of this journey; there's been enough of that to last for several sails over. Today I want to tell you one of my favourite stories from the past five and a half years. I want to tell you about Wasti.
Wasti came to us from the far north of Benin where he lived with his mama, his sister and his papa's other wives and children. His sister had something wrong with her eyes, and when Wasti was born with a cleft lip, there just wasn't any money left over from paying the doctors for his sister to even dream of surgery. Wasti's mama was thrown out; a woman who made nothing but broken babies wasn't worth anything and certainly didn't deserve a place in the family.
The situation seemed hopeless.
But then Wasti's mama heard about a ship docked in the port in Cotonou, a ship that would operate on her baby for free, and she knew that she had to make the journey. She sold the only thing she had left, the cow her husband had given her when he added her to his collection of wives, and used the money to make the long journey south with her little boy on her back.
They arrived to the ship at the eleventh hour. We had already filled the surgery schedule and were starting to turn our eyes towards packing up and sailing away when Wasti and his mama showed up on the dock. Our initial reaction was to turn them away. It was too late. Wasti had a respiratory infection that meant he couldn't go under anesthesia. There was something not quite right about the shape of his face, and we suspected (and later confirmed) a neurological disorder that would make the surgery even more of a gamble. The reasons to say no added up enough to tip the scale, and we sent Wasti to a local hospital where he could be treated for his infection.
A week later, I heard that there was a baby on the dock and ran out into the hot night to find Wasti and his mama there, determination stamped across her face. She knew that it was her last chance, that the ship was going to be sailing soon, and she had brought him back in the wild hope that we'd say yes this time.
After much prayer and discussion, it was decided to go ahead with the surgery. We knew that, because of Wasti's brain abnormality, he wasn't going to lead a normal life, and we couldn't send them back to their village with a baby still so broken; maybe if we fixed his lip his mama would have a chance at being allowed back into the family.
Wasti's surgery was the very last one we did that field service, a short half hour in the operating room held out to his mama as a promise of better things to come. He recovered perfectly, watched over by his mama and everyone else that came through the ward.
And when it came time for them to leave, on the morning we sent the last patients home, Wasti's mama took with her more than just her baby. In a little pouch, tied around her neck and hidden under her dress, was money collected from all the nurses and doctors who had cared for Wasti, enough so that she would be able to buy a new cow when she arrived back home. Because it wasn't enough just to do the surgery and send her back to nothing; she had only the clothes on her back when she came to us and would have had no way to provide for herself and her children without the cow she'd sold before she made the journey.
Mercy Ships talks a lot about bringing hope and healing. For Wasti and his mama, it was hope, healing, and a new cow. I think about them often, and every time I remember them I'm reminded that we are not called to help every person in the world. We're simply called to be faithful to the ones God places in front of us. For Wasti and his mama, that meant one more late-night prayer meeting, one more difficult discussion about how to proceed, one more surgery in a field service that had already seen us do so many.
There will always be one more.
And that's why we can't stop, why we're sailing towards Congo right now, ready to drop anchor and welcome all the ones that God is already preparing for us in this upcoming field service.
Monday, August 5, 2013
GONE . . .
Did you see 60 Minutes last night?
We were gone!
I mean - they changed the ending!
And Matt and I were deleted!
Big time bummer.
(Although that Zoe-girl is rather cute!)
MERCY SHIPS HAS CROSSED THE LINE!
Thank you, Jay, last summer's rescue hero, for the top photo
And Shelly, last summer's boss, for the bottom photo!
Sunday, August 4, 2013
FUN FACT!
Tomorrow evening the Africa Mercy will sail over the Equator at the very point where it intersects with the Prime Meridian.
In other words, the M/V Africa Mercy will
pass through the coordinates (0.0°, 0.0°). If you are a geography
major, a sailor, a pirate, have ever served in the Navy, or just know
random facts about maritime stuff – you may already know that this is
super cool. For this plottable accomplishment, crew will even get a
nautical title: “Royal Diamond Shellback.” At a ceremony tomorrow
night, everyone on board will receive certificates to prove it.
For sailors who achieve this esteemed
coordinatry, there is also a tradition of getting a tattoo of a sea
turtle.
What a year to miss the sail - although I don't mind missing the opportunity for a tattoo!
Thursday, August 1, 2013
From Ali's Blog . . .
As you may know, many crew members, both former and current, are posting their thoughts on "#sailwithus". I found this on Ali's blog (her husband Phil was two doors down from us last summer while Ali was home on maternity leave) and it's a must read. Enjoy!
Thursday, August 1. 2013
#sailwithus - liberia
If Sierra Leone has a special place in my heart, then Liberia has the rest of it.
There's something about the beginning of an adventure that just doesn't let you go, no matter how much closer to the end you get. Liberia was my first taste of West Africa, the first time I drove through darkened streets and turned into a port to see the ship all lit up like a beacon in the night. I met my husband on the side of one of her red dirt roads and knew I'd marry him on one of her beaches under a sky full of stars. Even now, five years down the road, it feels like I can still conjure up every face that smiled up at me from a bed in A or B or D Ward that year.
Liberia's where I came face to face with the shocking realities of poverty and lack of access to healthcare, the place I learned that where you're born will often determine the manner in which you die. It was a country still riddled with bullet holes, populated with people who ducked under their covers when a balloon popped, and I fell in love with it the second my feet touched the ground.
I credit that first, impossible year with Mercy Ships for making me into the person I am today; something about coming face to face with mortality (both your own and others') often has that effect. And nothing that year was better or harder than Baby Greg.
Born to an unwed mother whose father had cursed her, saying that she would never hold a living child in her arms, Baby Greg was a long shot. He had a tumor on the side of his neck that was growing to cut off his airway, and none of us knew whether we'd be able to take it off. But with two siblings already in the ground and a mama filled with wild, quiet desperation, we knew we had to try.
When we removed the tumor, it was discovered that Baby Greg's airway hadn't formed properly; it was too weak to stay open when he breathed, and so we spent the next month doing everything in our power to support him while we looked into other options. (For his whole story, you can click on his name under Patient Stories in the sidebar.)
Baby Greg's story doesn't have the happy ending we were all hoping for. I'll never forget that day in July, sitting next to him on his bed, when he just slipped away into the arms of Jesus. After everything we'd done, all the extra shifts and ingenious breathing machines and tear-filled prayers, he died anyway, and sometimes I still can't believe it.
I remember lying on the floor of C Ward with Marion, his mama, weeping in my arms. I remember the way the room in his house looked, lit by a single candle, when we sat vigil with his family after we took him home through the dark, hot night. It made no sense to me; this wasn't why I came to Mercy Ships. Where were the smiling faces, freshly-repaired after successful surgeries? Where was the joy? Where was the healing?
I wrestled with those questions for months afterwards until, one day, Marion came to visit. I'd been working to raise money for her to continue her education, and she wanted to stop by and let me know how school was going. As she was leaving, almost as an afterthought, she dropped the bomb that shattered every last question I had asked in the wake of Greg's passing.
My father and I are talking again. I told him about what you people did for me, and he wants to say thank you. And he asked me to please forgive him for what he did to me.
It was then that I realized how much bigger the story is than the tiny part I can hold in my hands. We thought we were supposed to save Baby Greg; it turns out all we had to do was love him and love his mama. God took care of the rest, just like He always does, and a broken family was pieced back together again, one fragile step at a time.
Whenever things seem hopeless, and when the night threatens to last forever, I remember Baby Greg, and I know that the sun will rise again. God is at work, and He will never leave us stumbling in the dark; the morning just might not look exactly the way we expected it to.
(Photo of Baby Greg courtesy of Mercy Ships.)
There's something about the beginning of an adventure that just doesn't let you go, no matter how much closer to the end you get. Liberia was my first taste of West Africa, the first time I drove through darkened streets and turned into a port to see the ship all lit up like a beacon in the night. I met my husband on the side of one of her red dirt roads and knew I'd marry him on one of her beaches under a sky full of stars. Even now, five years down the road, it feels like I can still conjure up every face that smiled up at me from a bed in A or B or D Ward that year.
Liberia's where I came face to face with the shocking realities of poverty and lack of access to healthcare, the place I learned that where you're born will often determine the manner in which you die. It was a country still riddled with bullet holes, populated with people who ducked under their covers when a balloon popped, and I fell in love with it the second my feet touched the ground.
I credit that first, impossible year with Mercy Ships for making me into the person I am today; something about coming face to face with mortality (both your own and others') often has that effect. And nothing that year was better or harder than Baby Greg.
Born to an unwed mother whose father had cursed her, saying that she would never hold a living child in her arms, Baby Greg was a long shot. He had a tumor on the side of his neck that was growing to cut off his airway, and none of us knew whether we'd be able to take it off. But with two siblings already in the ground and a mama filled with wild, quiet desperation, we knew we had to try.
When we removed the tumor, it was discovered that Baby Greg's airway hadn't formed properly; it was too weak to stay open when he breathed, and so we spent the next month doing everything in our power to support him while we looked into other options. (For his whole story, you can click on his name under Patient Stories in the sidebar.)
Baby Greg's story doesn't have the happy ending we were all hoping for. I'll never forget that day in July, sitting next to him on his bed, when he just slipped away into the arms of Jesus. After everything we'd done, all the extra shifts and ingenious breathing machines and tear-filled prayers, he died anyway, and sometimes I still can't believe it.
I remember lying on the floor of C Ward with Marion, his mama, weeping in my arms. I remember the way the room in his house looked, lit by a single candle, when we sat vigil with his family after we took him home through the dark, hot night. It made no sense to me; this wasn't why I came to Mercy Ships. Where were the smiling faces, freshly-repaired after successful surgeries? Where was the joy? Where was the healing?
I wrestled with those questions for months afterwards until, one day, Marion came to visit. I'd been working to raise money for her to continue her education, and she wanted to stop by and let me know how school was going. As she was leaving, almost as an afterthought, she dropped the bomb that shattered every last question I had asked in the wake of Greg's passing.
My father and I are talking again. I told him about what you people did for me, and he wants to say thank you. And he asked me to please forgive him for what he did to me.
It was then that I realized how much bigger the story is than the tiny part I can hold in my hands. We thought we were supposed to save Baby Greg; it turns out all we had to do was love him and love his mama. God took care of the rest, just like He always does, and a broken family was pieced back together again, one fragile step at a time.
Whenever things seem hopeless, and when the night threatens to last forever, I remember Baby Greg, and I know that the sun will rise again. God is at work, and He will never leave us stumbling in the dark; the morning just might not look exactly the way we expected it to.
(Photo of Baby Greg courtesy of Mercy Ships.)
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