we're open!!

The Mercy Ships hospital has been open for a week now and is buzzing with activity!!  Monday marked the first surgery of our ten-month outreach here in Benin!  I am currently working in Admissions for the first two weeks because they were short-staffed.  It has actually been a great place to start.  I get to be familiar with the process and the hospital stay from the very beginning.  I'm hoping this will make my transition to the ward easier.  I have learned a new skill too--drawing blood (we had phlebotomists draw blood at home)!!  And all the ones I have done so far have been children.  Their tearful faces reminded me why I worked mainly with adults back home :) Even so, it feels good to be a nurse again, I feel so at home.

Each patient that walks through our door has a story.  Two especially touched me this week...

The first was a boy about six years old.  His cervical lymph nodes were so swollen that it looked like a tumor growing on the left side of his neck.  He was a very shy and timid boy.  He didn't smile much and so my translator and I joked with him to not smile and so every time we tried to make him laugh we would tell him not to smile, and so all the more he tried not to and the corners of his mouth would creep up.  I can't wait to see his transformation!!

The second was a baby not quite a year old.  His mother brought him here hoping we could repair his two club feet. Club feet is a birth defect that causes one or both feet to grow completely inverted.  If left untreated, the child will grow to walk on his ankles or sides of feet. In my observations of this baby, I was overcome with emotion.  This child will soon never know or remember life with club feet.  He will learn to walk as his body and legs were structurally made to, and without pain or difficulty.  He won't be teased because of club feet or struggle with self-esteem. He will be able to run and play like other children. And his mom!--what overwhelming relief and joy she must feel that he is going to have surgery!! I wonder what she will be feeling and thinking the day he takes his first steps.  I hope that when she tells her son one day about his club feet and his surgery, she will tell him how fearfully and wonderfully he was made.  And that it was God that brought the ship to Benin and how God healed his feet!!  And that one day he will come to know the loving God that intimately created him and his feet.

Pharmacy

Lab

CT scan

X-ray

One of six Operating Rooms

Another OR

PACU (Recovery)

ICU (minus the ventilators)

Ward (one side of 4 total wards)

Dear God, 

May you bless every patient that occupies each one of these beds. Grant them peace and speedy recovery. Guide my tender care, I pray. Overflow me with your love to give.  And fill this place with your ever-biding presence, my Lord. 

Amen