My favorite patient right now is a 7 year old boy named Ebenezer, he has been here for over a month and will continue to stay as the grafts that were placed in between his fingers have failed and sloughed off so the surgeons are in the middle of deciding what the next step is. His joy is contagious, never bothered by the fact that he has been in a very small confined area for over a month he is always laughing, always smiling unless of course you have to change his dressings. His story I copied off the local newsletter here on the ship.
Ebenezer was out playing with a friend one day when he stumbled into a field where
charcoal was being made. The red-hot coals lay smoldering, hidden beneath a thin cover of topsoil. The heat was so intense it quickly melted Ebenezer’s plastic sandals to his feet. Confused by the sudden pain, the boy reached down in a futile attempt to brush away the hurt and so his hands were also badly burned. The pain quickly drove Ebenezer to his knees and he crawled to safety, leaving his legs burned as well. In the developed world, a child so badly injured would be immediately rushed to a specialized burns unit. But as in many poor countries, Ghana’s healthcare system is a pay-as-you-go service. Ebenezer was admitted to the hospital, but his burns received little attention because the family could not afford the cost. As a result the burned flesh contractedinto rock-hard scar tissue, pulling Ebenezer’shands and feet into misshapen claws.“The thing about burns is, if you don’t treat them ingood time they heal by what’s called ‘secondary tension’or ‘contracture formation’,” Dr. Tertius explains.“This means the wound pulls closed by itselfand that will pull your fingers closed in the palm ofyour hand or pull your shoulder up so that you can’tmove it…a frozen position.“So we release that and treat that with skin grafts.It’s obviously very satisfying to do that, particularlywith small children who come in with their hand in alittle ball and he can’t open his hand and you can releasethat with skin grafts and they do very well.They get a lot of function back in those hands.” Ebenezer is still in recovery onboard, but the grafts are holding and his prognosis is good. The boy’s mother, Matilda, is so impressed with the Mercy Shipshe’s decided the vessel and crew must be heaven sent. "I believe the nurses and doctors are little angels dropped from heaven just for my Ebenezer to get a chance at living again," Matilda says. "My boy is alive, he smiles and I see the light in his eyes." afford the cost.

I have had the privilege of caring for Ebenezer the past couple of days and he is remarkable. He limps around because his foot is completely bandaged and he loves watching Mighty Ducks. Every morning you will find him burrowed in his blankets, you have to dig for him for awhile. He wears a sweater that reaches to his ankles because he says he is always "freezing". He never complains of pain and is always up for playing with play dough. Selfishly I want him to stay forever, however I guess he has to go home sometime. For now he will be here for at least another week. And then it will be up to the doctors, if he goes home now he will have more use and function of his hands and feet than ever before so it is not a total loss however if we can fix his grafts and give him new ones it will correct the deformed part of his hands that embarrasses him so much.
My other favorite patient is named Gloria, she is 20 years old and has a badly deformed hand, she came to the ship to receive surgery on her hand to release some contractures and when she got here the staff found a very bad burn on her right foot. Apparently she had dropped an iron on her foot. Had she never come for the surgery on her hand we never would have seen her foot and she would have died of infection. The burn on her foot was badly infected and it was working it’s way up her leg. She has now had multiple debridements of her foot and it is healing miraculously well. The dressing change is quite painful and so we give her a little bit of morphine but she just grits her teeth and refuses to cry, she has a 2 year old son Joshua at home that she has to get back to. He was on the ship for awhile, he is very smart and speaks English and Twi already! The difference in her is that she is so brave and so strong never complaining about the pain never asking for medicine she just does as told and waits patiently for healing to occur. I am used to the patients at home who scream for pain medicine every hour, God has given her amazing strength and healing, it's awesome to see how the things we have to go without here in terms of medical supplies, different antibiotics that we don't have access to, these patients are still healing. There is pseudomonas on the ward right now and it's contained with that one patient, without any isolation. The rules and protocols that we follow at home in hospitals are ones that we have the ability to follow we have the supplies the equipment the capability and the money to make it happen. We don't have that here and it's been so incredible to see how people still heal, they still get better, infections don't spread and life goes on. It's pretty cool!