Real good Africa fun!

So to share some quick adventures from nursing here in Africa. About a week ago I was not working that day but had gone down to the ward to visit some patients. I saw a new little girl that was recovering from cataract surgery. She had the eye patches covering her eyes but she was talking and laughing and all over the place. She is three and I went to sit with her and her mom and played with her for a little bit, now keep in mind that the kids breast feed here in Africa in most places up until 3 or 4 years old. The breasts have absolutely no sexual value at all they are a tool for feeding and that is it, they are not considered attractive or something to covet after they simply are pacifers or feeding utensils. So anyhow I was sitting with this girl, I think her name was Edna, she starts pulling on my shirt and my bra really hard and she is gnashing her teeth together which in of itself was kind of creepy. She was grabbing at my chest/breast region and yelling in Twi the language here. I of course had no idea what she was saying but had a feeling she wanted me to feed her. I started to laugh and push her away and all of the patients were dying laughing so I grabbed a translator and asked her to translate and she said, " oh she wants to eat from you". I was like oh my that is just not possible. Nothing is coming out of these things so I left and later the supervisor said she has never had that happen to a nurse here. Of course!
Secondly yesterday on the ward one of the translators introduced me as Auntie Corrie which i was like woah buddy I am not that old nor am I an auntie. Then it was explained to me that it is a term of respect like I am a well respected individual here in the ward I am high up on the respect food chain. So okay I can deal with that but then they asked what day I was born, I know the date but didn't know the day of the week. That is very important here, they often don't know the date they were born but they always know the day of the week, their last names describe different situations in their life, such as Friday born is called Kofie, a twins surname is always Attah, Mensah means the father was the third born son. So I found out that I was thursday born, (mom I hope that is right, that's what the internet said) So my Ghanian surname is Baaba, so I am now called Auntie Baaba by the patients and translators on the ward. Oh so much fun!

Kinder Paradise Orphanage, Pram Pram



This weekend I had the opportunity to go to an orphanage that some of the plumbers and welders here on the ship have kind of taken under their wing. They have spent the last couple of weeks building the kids there a jungle gym. The orphanage Kinder Paradise is in a beautiful town on the coast, called Pram Pram. The location was chosen because there are so many street children and children homeless living on the ocean. It has a huge lot of land, much room to grow on and a church in Hamberg, Germany that is supporting them in entirety. They have sponsored the children and the lady that runs the orphanage, Silka is from Germany. She found most of the 50 children on the streets or in homes that were dilapitated, run down and unhealthy for living in. She took these kids in and soon started the orphanage. She divides her time between this orphanage and two homes for troubled teens in Accra. She estimates that there are 30,000 street children in Accra alone. Many are in danger of child slavery as that is still a huge problem here in Ghana. The orphange itself is rather new and absolutely beautiful with a school building and then a boys and girls home. The rooms are these huge spacious rooms with bunkbeds and mosquito nets for each child. It is a very peaceful place and the kids are so respectful and so well behaved. I went to church there on sunday and the kids did everything. They are starved for attention though and when you are there they are attached to you. One girl in particular is in the picture above she is in the red shirt her name is Gloria she was badly burned by her mother when she was a child, the doctors also believe that she suffered a stroke or some sort of brain damage. When Silka found her about two years ago she was lying in a bed, she was unable to talk or walk or even feed herself, her arms and feet were badly contracted and burned much like my pateint Ebenezer.
Gloria was taken to the orphanage and money was raised for her surgeries. Silka worked with her every day to take away the memory that walking hurts and she now talks beautifully, she walks with a limp and her right arm is rather bent however she has made amazing progress. This Friday I am headed back to the orphanage with the team of construction guys and the physical therapists on board that have very few patients right now so they are going to see how they can help Gloria and the other handful of children that would greatly benefit from some regular physical and occupational therapy. I am so excited that we are able to help them and provide for them at this time.
The playground will be finished in the next two weeks however Marcel the head of the project is a dreamer and he is always coming up with something new to add so when he gets back from his families time off I am sure there will be more additions to the already huge playground.
It has been awesome to be a part of this project as it gets me off the ship and it really shows how what seems like a minor little thing to us, a playground will change the lives of these 50 or so kids that have never seen anything like this. It's fun to go back each week and see how each week the kids that are learning to finally live in one place with one set of people get more settled and more at home. It's incredible to see their transformations from these homeless, hopeless famileless children to these happy carefree kids.

The above picture is of my patient Emmanuel. He was discharged today. He came last week for a cleft lip and palate repair. The entire upper roof of his mouth the palate was split into two pieces. The repair was intense and in the process made his airway about half the size that it was before. We didn't cut out his airway we just made it the size and shape that it should have been. He woke up with two nasal airways/trumpets in his nose a mouthful of stitches and a huge pack of ether gauze stitched to the top of his mouth. Above that he had forgotten where he was what had happened to him and there was this white nurse, blond haired blue eyed in his face asking him if he had pain as if that is even a fair question.
I don't think I realized how intense these surgeries were . We call them Maxillo-Facial surgeries because Dr. Parker the main surgeon on board mainly repairs jaws and faces and whatnot. These patients come back swollen and huge and with blood and spit in their mouth and they spit for the next 48 hours. I cannot imagine the pain and the feelin that your sinuses and your entire face has been adjusted. It's like a major major facelift.
Anyway back to Emmanuel, I got him on his postoperative ICU stay. He was terrified didn't understand any english therefore he fought me in everything I did. He needed saline nebulizers to keep the nasal trumpets from clotting off, after that he needed to be suctioned every two hours, and to keep him from pulling it all out he was on a morphine drip that because these patients never get morphine it makes them crazy!! On top of all of this his brother was there and just would yell at him, his brother didn't want to offend us so naturally he would just scream at him to calm down. as if a screaming 4 year old would offend us, like a four year old screaming would offend me anyhow so it was pure pandemonium for 10 hours. By the end he had turned the corner and was on the road to recovery, most of these max-fac patients if we can get them through the first twelve hours they will just soar! As Emmanuel was leaving today he gave me a big hug and a huge HI-FIVE his new perfect smile shone as he climbed the stairs the same stairs that he came down a week ago in hopes that he would be changed and he was not only physically but emotionally he was new. He is now allowed to attend school and public functions that before because of his deformed mouth he was banned from. As he left I was again reminded of why I do this, why I am here. I decided that for anyone reading this, no matter what you believe, religious or not God shows up on this boat. He shows up to repair this spirits and the broken hearts of these people. They come in and are so hopeless they are so dejected and so alone. I am reminded that Jesus again and again told his followers to love his sheep to love his children and to give them all that we could. I cannot imagine that doesn't at least affect some of us in the way that you can't look at these people and not want to give them something. They are the slums of societly they are the rejects. I wish I could say that we live in world where all of humanity is accepting regardless of color, race, religion, physical attributes but until then I have decided to be a part of the human race that chooses to give hope where there is none to give mercy where there is pain to bring joy and light and warmth to people that are crying out for anything and everything I have to give. That is the part of humanity that I want to be a part of. It is only then that my joy is complete.

A couple of people have asked about cataracts in young kids. They are very common in developing, poor nations largely due to lack of nutrition. Other reasons are dehydration, exposure to the environment and any sort of eye infection even minor ones that go untreated and unnoticed lead to cataracts and blindness. The surgery to clear cataracts is very quick in less than an hour sight is restored to these people and suddenly their world is radically changed because before they lost their jobs and families if they were older all because they couldn't see and now they have their sight. Something I take for granted regularly is these peoples livelihood.
Hope that answers your questions;)

New Pictures!!



This is Mbuyen (Mowen) she was a patient of mine for two weeks, she had a burn on her neck and her back that was released and she now can move her neck.
This is Ebenezer the subject of one of my previous blogs!

Kids at a local school...excited about the camera!

Jessi a fellow nurse with our patient Benis and her mom and sister.

Rosina a patient of mine that had a large facial tumor she had surgery in July and just went home she had a hole in the side of her face probably 3-4 inches deep. It has since healed but it was cool:)
a picture of the ship when they were doing lifeboat training
sunrise over the crows nest;)
a local boy that caught me taking his picture;)

This week I began my week of night shift here on the ward. We work from nine p.m to seven am. It's kind of odd timing because you would imagine that the patients would sleep for most of that. However I have decided that sleep is not a necessity for the local Ghanian people. They will get ready for bed and get into bed around 11pm. They fall asleep probably between then and midnight and then are awake, no joke showering and brushing teeth ready to go by 4:30-5am. I haven't decided what that is all about, however they take their cleanliness seriously. I look at their homes and where they live and think why bother cleaning, the floors are dirt and the ceilings of many homes are made out of palm leaves and mud, they are often barefoot so why bother cleaning but between the patients on the ward and the people I have seen in the community they are scrubbing not only themselves to a brilliant shine but also the areas around them. A couple of days ago I was reading books to one of the little girl patients, it was early after lunch and most of the patients were getting ready for naps ( that is why they don't sleep at night because these people are serious nappers) when a group of the women, three patients and one mom get up and go to town cleaning. They are dumping toys out of the toy bins, sweeping the floor, one of these women had so much gauze wrapped around her head you could hardly see her eyes, yet she was cleaning away. They went to town. Maybe I should have stopped them simply for infection control purposes however they were having the best time! Obviously they wanted to show us nurses how to clean properly and just the business was giving them a sense of purpose and satisfaction. It was a sight to be seen, one woman with an intense dressing on her head from a facial tumor removal, the other had bandages all over her arms from contracture releases and the other had a huge back dressing! In the end the toy corner was probably cleaner than I had seen it my two and a half weeks here.
This week Dr. Gary is back, he is the main surgeon, he has worked with Mercy Ships for 25 years, his specialty is cleft lip/palate repairs and the huge tumors you see on peoples faces, in their mouths and on their heads he removes them. He has raised his children on this ship and is an incredible surgeon. I don't have a clue how he learned to operate on these patients, seeing as his medical education in the US certainly didn't have patients such as these. He is incredible. Because he is back we are on full schedule here, we are using all three operating theatres as they call them and have over 8 surgeries a day. We have a couple of children right now that are having cataract surgery it's so awesome to watch these little kids whom have been blind for most of their little young lives, I am talking 2-7 years of age, they come for cataract release and all of a sudden you take the bandages off and they can see. It's so cool to watch them focus their eyes as they look around and see mom, and these weird white people! I don't think they had the concept of colored people before! It's so fun to watch them get their site.
Just a quick note about living on the ship. Every Monday night we play cricket on the back deck. Now cricket is the oddest sports of all time. Especially as i have learned in real life in England they actually take tea breaks in the middle of the game so these games could go on for days. Fortunately we don't do that but Iam finding that cricket is harder than it looks. But it's fun. I think the ships docked next to us can't seem to figure out what is going on as we scream and yell and throw balls at the wicket! lots of fun;)
!