Quantitative data, like statistics, are necessary to present the facts but they grossly under-tell the story. I love what my supervisor Mirjam says “Numbers don’t tell the whole story. Every number has a name, and every name is a life, an individual with their own story to tell”. Every individual has a heart and soul that longs to know how loved they are by God. There are 7 billion people on this earth, yet God cares about the one. I often find this mind boggling. He loves the individual person that he uniquely created. There are many attempts to explain this but one that I love is by Matthew. He compares God to a shepherd. He tells us to imagine a shepherd who owns a 100 sheep and realises he’s lost one of them. He doesn’t say oh who cares, 99 will do, I'll forget about the one I lost. No, he goes searching for the one and rejoices over it when he finds it. Our heavenly father cares about the one.
One of the faces and stories behind the numbers belongs to a little two year old girl, named Fitia. On our last day of screening in Mahajanga, towards the end of the day, a desperate mother arrived with her daughter who had a large infected burn wound to her chest. Fitia had been burnt three months earlier when she accidentally pulled a pot of hot water onto herself. Her parents took her to the doctor and bought antibiotic ointment but could not afford anything more. Of course Fitia needed much more than just antibiotic ointment to her badly burnt chest. Desperate, they went to the traditional doctor who advised them to spit onto the wound each day. Obviously, after three months of this, her burn was badly infected and not healing. The likely outcome at best for this little girl would have been a severe burn contracture to her neck or sepsis from the infection.
One of the nurses on the screening team, Nate was assessing Fitia. She was in agony, so obviously unwell, and desperate for help. Nate knew what needed to be done – surgical debridement, antibiotics and skin grafts. However there was dilemma. As much as we would like to, as an organisation, we can’t fix everything, we can’t help everyone. Therefore there are strict criteria for us to follow to find patients that can be helped within Mercy Ship’s scope of practice. The scope of plastic surgery on the ship excludes recent burns that have occurred within six months or operating on infected wounds. There are just far more complications and a lot more risk involved when these patients. But trying to explain this and say no to Fitia and her mother didn’t seem right. So Mirjam called the ship, to ask hospital leadership for an exemption for this patient, and with wisdom and mercy a decision was made to accept and help this patient. She was then flown back with us on our MAF flight from Mahajanga to Tamatave. A terrified little girl sat on the back of the plane with her anxious mother who was willing to trust us.
Fitia spent almost three months receiving both inpatient care on-board the ship and outpatient care. She received good nutrition, antibiotics, and surgeries to clean her burn and apply skin grafts and she has been loved and cared for in a way that is unique to this incredible hospital. She arrived on board the ship so fearful, crying into her mother’s arms and hiding whenever anyone came close. But it wasn’t long before she was laughing and playing with the nurses and other children on the ward.
Two weeks ago she was discharged home. No longer is she in agony, so sick and desperate for relief from her infected burns. Instead she is a happy two year old; her wounds have healed, she is healthy and her future is so so bright.
Sometimes it’s so clear to see, other times it’s almost impossible*, but I know that it’s true;
God cares about the one.
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