Blessing(s)

When I heard Blessing was coming back to this ship this outreach and out on the dock I got so excited! Blessing is one of my favorite patients from Liberia back in 2008...she has had several surguries from us at different stages for noma on her face. Noma is the flesh eating bacteria that can leave gaping holes in the flesh. We made a new lip for her in Liberia. I can still remember her and Marthlyn trying to teach each other how to talk. One had no lip and one had a cleft lip repair. It was quite funny and rediculously cute!



I finally got down to the ward to see her and her mom today. She is so big and hardly recognizable. I brought a picture with me of her and I in case she was too young to remember. Her mom gave me a big hug and I think Blessing seemed to remember me, but she had just gotten out of surgery and a bit groggy. It's so fun to see how well she is doing from the last time I saw her...and hear some Liberian english from her mom (Blessings lips were out of commission after surgery again).:) She looks so good! Below is a picture of her on a chair next to me on deck 7.

Another patient from Togo last year was also flown in for further surgery. Afi had a huge neurofibroma on her face. Quite a bit was removed last year but it could not all be taken care of. We sent her back to her village last year after instructing a family member how to do her extensive wound care. You always wonder how those situations will turn out...if there will be healing or infection. It was great to see her back and looking fabulous. Her face had healed up great. She had surgery Monday here and things went well. She did lose alot of blood and ended up in the ICU for a day but is doing great now. She is still super shy because of her deformity and probably being in a new place also, but we will keep working on that;)

Tani is another favorite from last year who is supposed to come back for more surgery but there are visa issues...so we can keep praying her her to make it here.

It is just such a joy to see patients return and see how well they have done since the last surgery. God is good!

I SPY

So now you can see why we need divers going down 2 times a day to keep the intakes clean or else we lose air conditioning and power -mission critical. It is quite a bad situation with all the trash that gets put in the water along with the crazy currents. We are currently frantically looking for a full time diver. Right now we only have a handful of divers that volunteer and 3 of them happen to be nurses which we also need to work full time on the ward...so Timo and Dan have been doing both. Many people have been putting in lots of extra time and effort. The diving conditions are less than ideal and down right scary at times with visability about 1 foot! Keep them in your prayers!

If you look closely you can see Olly...one of my favorite mates whose family is my family on the ship. I believe the other one pictured is Dan...one of our ICU nurses. It does not always look that bad in the water, but down below always seems to be quite dark and trashy.

One of my friends who was diving said that as he surfaced once he realized the sewage tank was getting emptied......onto him. MMM. Those divers are amazing..and pretty miraculous they are all still healthy more or less.

Stuck Between a Rock and a Bronchus

I just want to update everyone on a story that is a bit overdue about God's continued faithfulness here. A couple weeks ago through an unusual circumstance we had a small girl come to the ship with "an object in her throat". This little girl has supposedly inhaled a rock a couple weeks before. We usually do not do any type of "emergency surgery", but in this case the patient was brought to the ship. A local ENT surgeon was brought to do the surgery, they just needed anesthesia which we could provide. When I first heard about this, I kind of groaned because I feel like often when we allow special circumstances to happen that we usually would not do we often set ourselves up for problems.

This was supposed to be a simple surgery that turned into a 6 hour long operation. You know it's hairy when even the orthopedic surgeon on board eventually goes in to check up them. During community meeting that Thursday night about 4 or 5 hours into the surgery they had us all pray. In my mind I was dreading the worst. I was envisioning a little girl losing her life here and having to process this with all the new nurses and justify what happened. The surgery was finished after 6 hours with the rock still stuck in the little girls bronchus. They tried everything...even a last ditch effort of super glue to get it out only pushing it down further. Little Josephine came back to ICU not doing so hot. I have to be honest that I really did not feel good about this supposedly simple operation turning horribly wrong.

I can proudly report though, that God worked in some amazing ways to allow this girl to be discharged last Friday with a great prognosis! Here are just a few ways God is amazing.

1. The first night Josephine got back from surgery intubated one of our adult ICU nurses was taking care of her. At around 2 am my roomate who is a pediatric nurse and was charge nurse in a ward down the hall decided to go check on this nurse and patient. At about the exact same time a pediatric ICU nurse was feeling restless in bed and could not sleep so decided to get some tea. She could not stop thinking about the ICU so decided to meander down to check on the patient. Both my roomate and this other nurse walked in at the precise moment the little girl was going down hill. The adult ICU nurse is used to leaving the airway in no matter what so she did not think to pull it out. The pediatric ICU nurse came just in time and said to pull the airway. Sure enough, they pulled it, and the airway had gotten clogged. They were able to reintubate the child and save her life. This happened very fast, but the fact that God orchestrated the two pediatric nurses to come in at that exact moment was a miracle and saved her life.

2. We do not always have pediatric anesthesia providers on board...but during the several days the patient was hospitalized and in ICU we had an AMAZING pediatric anesthatist - Michelle White- here to help provide care for this patient when she was doing very poorly and she was able to help run the code at 0530 one morning when the girl was struggling again.

3. God also orchestrated a cardiothoracic surgeon to fly in from Kenya on less than a days' notice to do a thorocotomy and get the rock out of the lung. This is not a surgery we do on the ship, but again, God provided. That weekend when we all of the sudden needed a pediatric ICU nurse, a couple of our few pediatric ICU nurses happened to be the ICU nurse cover for the weekend. We even had an ICU nurse who worked on a thoracic unit back home scheduled to be the ICU nurse a couple days later which was perfect when the patient had a chest tube!

All of this to say...God continues to blow me away here! So many times I have seen God provide the exact right people at the right time. When we have patients with specific issues it seems God always provides a nurse with that specialty who happens to be volunteering here at the specific time we need it. He provides the exact right ICU nurses and anethetists for the exact time we need it. He even provides the right surgeons at the right time for example when my friend had his finger chopped off last year and an orthopedic surgeon who has a specialty in hands happened to be on board to sew his finger back together. I do not know why I even consider doubting God any more. I am human so I still feel myself in that place at times, but absolutely LOVE it when God continues to work miracles and provide for dim situations right in front of my eyes. May HE continue to get the glory for what happens here. So many times situations are beyond our control, expertise, knowledge...but God continues to prove that HE is so much bigger than our limited resources and knowledge.

After the second surgery, Josephine did very well and was discharged less than a week later! She is coming back for a follow up appointment tomorrow actually. Here is a picture of this precious little miracle baby.

On a side note...this mom and dad lost their other little baby earlier this year, so it was awesome that we could be a part of giving their only child left another chance at life. To God be the glory!