Around the Ward

Hello Everyone...I just got done working the midnight shift this past weekend. I am adjusting back to sleeping at night and living during the day. On one of my midnight shifts I took some time to take a few pictures of the ward. After all, this is where I have spent the majority of my time the last 2 months. We are not allowed to take pictures of patients while they are on the ward, so the pictures are of an empty ward. Most of the time the ward is filled with people. When a patient comes in for surgery, more often than not, they bring family with them. Usually this is because the patient is a mother who brings her children with her or the patient is a child who needs to have a parent with them. Last weekend I took care of a patient here for a thyroidectomy who had 6 month old twins with her. I spent more time taking care of her twins, Hope & Joy, than I did actually looking after the patient. (No complaints here - the children were lovely and so cute). So, in the pictures the ward might actually look big. However, when you add in family members sleeping on the floor, kids playing and running everywhere, patients and nurses the room gets filled up quickly.


This first picture is our Intesive Care Unit (ICU). Thank God we haven't had to use it too much since I have been here. This is a 3 bed ICU with 2 isolation rooms as well.


This is a picture of one of our four wards all cleaned up and ready for patients.


This is our "nurses" station. Now imagine 4 nurses all crowded around the cabinets at 8am trying to all get to the same medicine for the patients. It is the same here as at home, the nurses station is never big enough!


This is our medicine cabinet. Mostly pain meds, antibiotics, antifungals, de-worming meds, and vitamins.


And this last picture is one of my favorites. This is a picture of what hangs on the wall in the ward bathrooms for the patients. It is pictures depicting for the patients what NOT to do in the toilet. The toilets are not for doing laundry and not for standing on. Most of our patients have never seen toilets as we know then, so sometimes they need a bit of instruction.

Along the road...

Well, I am sorry I haven't blogged at all in the last few days. I was just starting to wonder if anyone was reading this anyway - and boy was I wrong! Three people have emailed me to tell me to get posting! Sorry!!! I have been working quite a bit. We are experiencing a lot of transition here. A few of the doctors that have been here since the beginning of the outreach (February)are heading home, or at least heading to a well deserved break. Many nurses that have been here since February are going home, and many that are here for 2 years are reaching the half way point and are getting to go home for a few weeks too. So, those of us that are here now are providing the much needed relief to so many nurses that have been so giving. We are also switching all of the shifts to 12 hours, so I will work longer days but hopefully with less days to work. It all depends on how many people show up for their scheduled surgeries and how many nurses we have.

Today I took a walk by myself just to try to get away and think. On a ship of 400+ people and living in a cabin of 6 people there isn't much one can do to get away and think. I headed down the dock to the road - the only place we are allowed to go by ourselves. The road is guarded by UN soldiers and gated off from the city. It isn't long, but it is all we have for a "yard" so to speak - a place to stretch our legs. I really wanted some time to think, and some time to be with God. I have been here for over 3 weeks now and I feel very settled in. God has brought me some great friends and I meet more and more people everyday. So much so that it is hard to get time alone. So I headed out for a walk, to be with God and think about all that is happening here.

I didn't get very far in my walk when I ran into one of my recent patients. I didn't even realize that he had been discharged home. Today he was walking up the road to the ship to go for a follow up appointment. I almost didn't recognize him he was so happy. The smile on his face was wider than the ocean. His name is Junior and he is a 27 year old that came to the ship for help with some sores on his back. When we lifted up Junior's shirt, he had several growths known as keloids. They are growths of scar tissue that formed big lumps on his skin. They resulted from him being marked with tribal markings all down his back and sides. The surgeon on the ship was able to remove the scar tissue from Junior's back, but now Junior has an open wound that we are still caring for daily. Junior hugged me and thanked me for caring for him these last several weeks and then continued on down the road.

A few minutes later coming the other direction was another family that had been my patient. A little baby that was here for a cleft lip repair and was now going home. The family stopped and hugged me and thanked me over and over again.

I was talking with a friend last night and she asked me what was the best thing about being here so far. I have to say the best thing is the patients. This trip has caused me to remember that I do love being a nurse. I love to take care of people, comfort them, encourage them on the bad days. The people here are SO grateful. I am amazed at their strength, their courage, their ability to have horendous things happen to them and they don't have a chip on their shoulder. They are resilient, they are filled with gratitude for the help they have received. They are hopeful people.

Liberia is recovering from a civil war that ended in 2003. All of my patients have lived through war and are still recovering, have the memories fresh in their mind. I cannot even begin to imagine all that they have endured. Not only that, but most of the patients being treated by Mercy Ships are here because they have some disfiguring growth or tumor that needs to be removed. Most of the time these people are social outcasts because of this. I have one patient named Friend that had a wound on his back. He told me he was kicked out of his village because of this and for years was taken care of by missionaries. He is here at Mercy Ships to finally get the skin graft to cover his wound on his back and have it heal into a normal looking back.

I took a walk down the road to get some time alone with God. Instead, God showed up in the faces of some amazing Liberian people. People with open hearts, filled with gratitude, hopeful for a fresh start. I could not be more grateful to God that He allowed me to be here. That He made a way for me to be a part of the work that He is doing in Liberia...to bring hope and healing in so many ways physically, emotionally, spiritually.

I hope to have more pictures of patients coming. It is a delicate thing to get pictures of the patients. We are restricted as to when and where we can photograph them. I would love to introduce you to some of the many beautiful people here so I will try.

Africa Mercy Youth Group

Meet some of the young boys on the ward...I call them the Africa Mercy Youth Group. These are the boys that I spend time playing Uno with.


Meet Emanual, he is 14 years old and here for surgery to his leg. He rarely has any visitors and no family stays with him while here. He has teamed up with another boy Alfred, and they seem to be inseparable. Emanual has a heart of gold. Every night that I have cared for him he has asked me to come over to his bed and pray for him before he goes to sleep. Then, in the morning he gets up, comes over to me on his crutches and thanks me for taking care of him.



And this is Alfred. Infamous Alfred. He is the ring leader of the ward that he stays on. He is a ham and tends to steal the show. He is very quick witted and tends to get his followers into trouble at times. Him and Emanuel are good buddies and they hobble around on their crutches visiting each ward. Currently Afred has launched a scheme to write and produce a play with other patients as his actors and actresses to put on a show for the nurses and doctors to thank them for their help.

The boys are wearing paper "crowns" in the pictures. They had just finished watching the Chronicles of Narnia and the craft was to make the crowns.

I am finishing my last of three evening shifts tonight. Then I am off this weekend and am looking forward to investigating Monrovia more. Plans are to go to the beach and to African church.

Shift Work

I have now officially started working on the Africa Mercy. Yesterday was my first shift, I worked 7-3pm. I am on orientation for one more day (that's right 2 days of orientation) and then I am on my own. I took care of 3 patients yesterday. One man was in his 40's and had jaw reconstruction and a bone graft taken from his hip the day prior. I also had a 3 month old baby that had a cleft palate repair 4 days ago. My third patient was a women we think was in her 50's that had a thyroid goiter removed from her neck - that day. There are so many things on the ward that are SO different than at home, and some things are very similar. The bottom line is that you work with what you have and improvise the rest. Good thing I have babysat recently for my precious "nephews" Josh, Brandon, and Jack - since most of my shift yesterday I was busy making up bottles for the baby.


It is very different working on a ward where it is one room and all the patients are together. There are two sides to the room, women on one side and men on the other. However, they all share one bathroom. I find that astounding - but since most of the Africans don't have bathrooms as we know them at home - most have never even seen a toilet until they come on the ship - I guess they don't mind sharing. At the end of every day shift we take the patients that can walk outside to get some fresh air. I finished my shift watching some children patients play the Memory game on deck #7 . It was nice to get outside and feel the sunshine and the slight breeze. It is hot - but so far I haven't been outside long enough to get really sweaty. I am thanking God for the air conditioning on the ship. To think that back in the 70's when the Mercy Ships first began they had no air!!

One other thing that is different that definitely tells me I am not at home working- we start and end the shift praying for our patients. Also, when I took my one woman patient to the operating room for her surgery, the surgical nurse came out to meet us and he prayed for the patient and the surgery to go well, etc.

In my down time I have been trying to relax and get some sleep. This week I am working every shift, so I am just letting my body do whatever it wants for sleep. Yesterday I worked the day shift, today and tomorrow I work afternoons (2-10pm) and on the weekend I work 12 hr shifts from 7p-7am. So, I am sleeping whenever I feel like it. No sense in trying to get myself on any kind of schedule - I don't think I will have one while here!