The Queens birthday!

Today was 'Queens day,' a day acknowledging the Queen's birthday, and a huge deal for the deutchies on board the ship. to the extent that they set up a huge typical celebration on board and outside on the dock. there were stalls selling all sorts of things, food, local crafts, games for the kids, and outside landrover pulling races and many other random activities! There was a photo taking area where we dressed up in whatever bits and bobs were there and took silly photos. It's so fun to have lots of community things to do!
So before my night shift tonight, I went and had a go at pulling a landrover, oh yes, one rope, little old me... arrrggghhhhh! I did it too!! Check me out! I may never walk again but I did it....!
We had great fun, pics to follow in a little while!

Church in the village

Last Sunday we went to a small church 'Pillar of fire' in a village a short drive from the ship. It has some regular Mercy Ship attenders. We arrived after a pretty bumpy ride on some dirt tracks, surrounded by very lush green trees, and houses with precarious tin rooves dotted around, after lots of hearty waves from small kiddies around adn about outside as we passed by we arrived at the church. The whole area of land is the churches, so at one side is a concrete slightly raised up platform, with woven palm tree leave walls (I think that's what it was!) and a tin roof. Not exactly sturdy but so beautiful! There were rows of plastic chairs and a few benches. Outside there was an area with a roof but no walls, where they do studies, teaching etc. Just a little way from the church was a ploughed area of ground that the people from the church have started planting different types of vegetables in to see what they can grow more extensively. Lots of shoots were appearing and the Pastor (one of the dayworkers from teh ship) proudly showed us what they had been planting.
The service was being run by the kids, they did the notices, a story in drama and led all the singing. I tell you you haven't heard music till you've heard African drumming. It is such an amazing rhythm and sound. I am determined to get my 3 clap rhythm before my trip is out!! One person sings a line, the rest repeat it and so the singing continues, who needs power point?! The beautiful heartfelt sounds give me goose bumps every time! And the kids leading it, well anyone who knows me will know my heart is pretty much going all out...
What continues to be so amazing to me is the respect that people come to church with. As we eneterd the building, one of the men was just arriving having walked probably a good distance, he pulled out a cloth and began to polish his shoes. Only then did he enter the building. It seems so alien to me yet so humbling. The women too come in the most amazing outfits, beautuiful fabric and so bright. I am planning to get myself an African outfit made at the local tailors but I'll never be able to carry it off quite so well. I had to settle for my own semi African print dress I bought in the Uk before I left instead this time.

Weekend work and play

Saturday was a very exciting and somewhat chaotic morning. Remember the sisters who's girls had their cleft lip repairs? Well, they and 2 of our little boys who had bilateral club feet repairs went home. It was quite a chaotic morning but it was great to see them all disappear home! After that the ward was quite quiet so I joined in a few games of uno with the young lads on the ward.
We have a slight lack of nurses crisis right now so we have all been doing extra shifts, and covering for a few sick people. As the ward was quiet we were able to give some of the nurses some time back so I manned A ward from 3 til 7pm on my own. It was lovely though. The patients told me before I left I had done a very good job ;-) That made me laugh lots, I think the were happ because I had chance to play UNO again with them!
Every Saturday morning we have a team of people come and do a ward activity. It's great fun! The middle of the ward is set up with huge tables and table cloths, crayons, scissors and whatever else might be needed. For 2 and a half hours kids and adults, patients and carers come and sit and painstakingly colour and cut and stick. You have never seen such a great sight. They all just love to do stuff like that so much, so they all coloured then cut out a picture of africa which they then made into a jigsaw. They were all so proud. The people who couldn't get out of bed we gave things for them on their beds. One of my patients who is a pastor spent ages colouring his picture so perfectly. I can't get over how many of the normal things we do the just haven't had opportunity to do!

Friday night was English night!

Well after a great day at work, a group of British people from the ship took a landrover and for a curry! We had a really lovely time sitting under a huge tin roof outside the restaurants building and ate amazing curry. Not quite sure what the need for the movie screen in the background playing some kind of Greese tpe movie (musical) with no sound...
Had lots of fun just chatting and being British ;-)
Stopped off for banana icecream on the way home (only because it was the only flavour they had!). Back at the dock we decided to sit outside and watch the huge storm that was rattling around out at sea. It was amazing, huge fork and sheet lightening. I love a good storm!

Just a bloomin brilliant mornin'!

Well, last night I came from work feeling a little like the most evil nurse in the world! Several of my patients were under 2, and you would be surprised how much some of them are either scared of nurses, but largely scared of white people in general. So, unfortunately, every time I tried to give medication or take vital signs, there was a quivering lip and eventually a huge sob. It became a running joke with my colleagues to shout as soon as a baby cried, 'Grace, what did you do now!?' On the flip side, their mum's were so lovely and just laughed it off.
Yesterday was also another 'first' day for me. I put in my first IV cannula, I am so excited! That may sound ridiculous to many of you but I haven't been trained in England (all about the paperwork and competencies there ;-) ) plus I didn't spill or anything. Hurrah!! My second hurrah, was a beautiful new 9 month old orthopaedic patient, and he was just precious and let me do everything I needed to do without even a whimper.

My shift today was a little more jolly. I really just wanted to connect with my patients. I managed to remove the most awkward sutures from a patient's eye and lip (eek, blade, eye equals shaking lots!), plus have you ever tried trying to spot dark blue sutures on black skin, through stubble? Not so easy I can tell you that! In fact, this was the guy that I wrote about a while back who had severe seizures and how amazed I was at teh patients all praying so fervently. Now he gets to go home AWESOME!

After that, I managed to spend time with one of my patients who had removal of an enormous tumour yesterday. He is such a gentle nice man. He had quite a lot of bleeding after his surgery last night so I spent some time today helping him wash, change sheets and getting him comfortable. It was so humbling. he was just so thankful and calm. A real privelage to look after and it was so nice to have the time to invest in him.

A little later I spotted a young man (not one of my patients but in my ward), he had had eye surgery yesterday. He was really upset and crying I had no clue why,but I sat and chatted to him for a while. It turns out he had just done his first set of eye wound care - we teach this so they can carry on at home using a mirror. He was obviously quite distressed with what it looked like. He just said to me 'I am just so worried about my eye'. It is all too easy, as i am sure any nurse or doctor anywhere can testify, to forget how significant and traumatic surgery can be. So, we just took some time, chatted and then prayed. Great!

Just to finish off such a lovely day, we went up to deck 7 where we take our patients to see a bit of the outside world between shifts. We took 2 little girls who had had cleft lip repairs (5 months old and cousins (and one of the girls twin brothers) and had a great time just playing. They are so beautiful, and it is so awesome to see them breastfeeding properly like they have never been able to before. It is so amazing to see the difference in the twins size, just as a result of the quality of feeding they have been able to have, one with and one without cleft lip. The girls mum's were sisters too, how great they could go through all this together.

Finally, news from down the corridor...we have had to have one of our wards open for patients with some very bizarre infections, to isolate them from other people. Today we were able to close that as all thpatients infections were either gone/settled enough to join the main ward. WOW!

So, today has been a fabulous exciting, blessed, fulfilling day. I know not everyday will leave me so elated but I am so thankful to be part of this on good days and bad days. These people are phenomenal and teach me new things everyday, and a smile...the key to so much!

Missionaries of charity visit 2

You may remember last week that I visited a hospice type place, run by a group of sisters and working to look after children and adults suffering with HIV and other debilitating diseases.
Well, this morning I went again, our team was a little smaller but 2 of us did go to spend time with the children again. We were fairlly well mobbed as we arrived, and decided to try and focus our attention on the slightly younger children this week. There were a few more ladies around helping today, but still the ratio was 4 to 35 kids age from a few weeks to 10 years (most falling in the 1 year to 3 year bracket).
So much of what we do is just giving out love and affection to the children. We decided to take fewer activities and sing some songs. The kids just liked us being there. It was particularly hard because the kids can at times be a little violent to each other in order to get our attention, they all want to be on your lap. It's hard to shout at them when really you are the only one on one attention they ever get, how can you say no to them? so we did our best to cuddle and involve a few children in what we were doing.
A little later I went to assist one of the sisters with feeding the smallest babies their milk. There were 4 all in cots and so clearly crying for their lunch! They were able to have their bottles but because of lack of hands the bottles were propped up on blankets if they couldn't hold them. It was so nice to be able to pick up a little one and feed them their bottle properly.
Several of the kids you could feel their body temperatures were so hiigh because they were sick. You may remember from my last visit I mentioned a tiny boy who had disturbingly low tone in his limbs who was clearly quite poorly. I looked for him today and he wasn't there. He may have gine home or to hospital but sadly I fear the worst may have happened. That's what makes leaving the kids in this place so tough! The sisters clearly care so much but there are limits to what they can do. I just simply went and loved and cuddled the children, not a huge sacrifice to me at all, (in fact I couldn't have been happier doing much else!) but to these kids, absolutely a crucial act of kndness.

The background of many of our 'plastics' patients

I thought I would just give a bit of information about how many of our patients requiring plastics and burn surgery come about. The main way of cooking in Liberia is either open fire or using oil stoves and lamps. As a result many of our patients have had quite horrific burns from fire or from spilt oil. Children are particularly at risk of having such burns. Our team have recently been involved in 'releasing' burn contractures, where skin as become tight and forced a limb into an abnormal position. For example, one child I have been looking after had burnt his legs and one foot in particular had been pulled inwards so it was difficult to walk. He has been able to have surgery from a skin graft to ensure the foot is able to go into the correct position. Without it, he may well have been considered 'disabled' and unable to walk and support a family in the future.

I have also heard some quite distressing stories of other burns. It is not uncommon to have more than one wife here, and on occasions there can be a great deal of jealousy between them. One very sad story is of a lady who had hot water/oil from a cooking stove poured over her by the 'other wife' because of her jealousy. Consequently she has huge burns covering her arms, and back and her skin is severely disfigured. Her surgery was to try and return function to her arms using skin grafts from healthy tissue. She is doing quite well now and her face lights up in a way before her surgery she would never have dreamed of. It has been tough to look after her knowing her story but her guts and her now smiling face is a delight!