Cameroon letter #9 - little rays from so much brightness

Dear friends,

It’s been a week since I wrote and I apologize for the delay. In between a couple night shifts and switching back to days, saying goodbye already to new Mercy Ships friends, and a cold, I haven’t felt creative enough to write. But this afternoon, as I attempted to rig up a blanket fort on the top bunk where I am quarantining myself today, I thought – “I can make blanket forts, so I can totally write a letter.” And here we are.

I’m not allowed to take my own pictures with our patients; Mercy Ships has a wonderful photography team that periodically takes pictures instead. The pictures I’m posting are from the photography team. So far, I haven’t been on the ward for any of the photo ops, but I’ll post a picture I’m actually in as soon as I get one.

Some of our fistula patients at their dress ceremony immediately before discharge  -  photocred Mercy Ships

                It’s taken about a month to feel like I have a routine here. The ship stairwells are a little odd to me – not all continuous – so it’s only the past week that I’ve felt like I can map out the fastest route to the laundry room in my mind. Switching from day to evening to night shifts and back requires a more flexible sleep schedule – I’ve been working 12 hour day shifts and going to bed at 10 pm for 3 years.  I’ve done paper charting before, but not much, and I didn’t realize how much I relied on my last job’s computer-generated electronic task list to organize my day until I had to start making little paper lists to organize my patient care in D Ward. But now that all these new elements are starting to feel familiar, I am looking forward to the next month, during which I hope to observe more Mercy Ships ministries outside the ship. This weekend I got to do dressing changes for some of our outpatients who came in for follow up. I really enjoyed seeing them and observing how their wounds are healing. 

Some of my fellow ward nurses (and a small friend) taking meds out of the Omnicell  - photocred MercyShips

                Now that my nursing role is more familiar, I’m enjoying the relationships I get to build with day crew and with my patients. I’ve settled into more of a routine, sometimes translating for patients and other times feeling confident saying, “Ok, I’ve heard you, and I’m going to tell your nurse that you need herand while I’m gone ____ (day crew staff member) will help you.”  I’m also building friendships with some of the longer-term patients. At first I didn’t write about them because I wasn’t sure how much is appropriate to share while still respecting their privacy. But they light up my life here and I want to share a little bit with you.

                     My roommate Jill (she's an OR nurse)   - photocred MercyShips

Aissa is the mother of one of our cleft-palate babies. Like many Fulani women, she doesn’t know her own birthday or her age, although I can’t imagine she’s older than twenty years. She is kind, intelligent, and girlishly playful. She is one of the sharpest girls I have ever met; although she says she never attended school and she can’t read Roman letters, she must have watched her father (a Muslim imam in Northern Cameroon) or brothers write in Arabic enough to pick it up. And she didn’t just learn to copy words either; she can write phonetically, and she enjoys writing our nursing staff’s names in Arabic script and explaining what she’s written to us. In her couple months on the ward, she has learned significant amounts of French, Hausa, and English. She sometimes helps us translate Fulfulde. She is a devout Muslim, praying faithfully five times a day in the tiny space between her daughter’s cot and the next patient’s bed. She helps care for other patients, hugs the nurses when we come to work, and occasionally breaks out into her teenage-girl side, shuffle-dancing in the hallways, bouncing her daughter on her hip, and singing songs she makes up. Please pray for full healing for her baby daughter, a successful return home to their family, and that Aissa’s obvious desire to know God would be fulfilled with peace, hope, and certainty. 

Aissa and her daughter      - photocred MercyShips

One of the things I really enjoy about working with patients on Mercy Ships is how motivated and incredibly smart many of them are. I wonder if it’s because survival can be so hard in this part of the world – their minds stay keen, sharp, rapidly grasping whatever information they need for daily survival. Despite their many disadvantages – low-to-no literacy, poverty, lack of access to clean water or medicine, poor nutrition, low social status – or maybe because of them, many of our patients are incredibly determined, resilient, and resourceful. And they bring those keen, resilient minds and attitudes with them to their hospital stays, and they inspire me so much. To be honest, this is one of my favorite things about being a nurse – about working in healthcare at all – the way that working closely with suffering, healing people can deepen my own hope and improve my attitude. If my patients can pull through the challenges they have faced, who am I to imagine that I can’t overcome barriers in my own life?   

Some of my awesome fellow nurses and Aissa      - photocred MercyShips

When I think about motivated, overcoming people, I think of my patient Augustin. Augustin is a thirty-some-year-old man who had a large mandibular tumor. I couldn't find any pictures of him, so you'll just have to imagine. He’s an easy-going, funny, very intelligent guy – fluent in English and French, university-level education, quick to grasp all patient education and just as quick to teach other patients. His wife took his two kids and left him as his jaw tumor worsened. He hasn’t let that rejection get to him – he’s been amiably asking the nurses and ward staff out ever since he came to us.  We had to remove part of his jawbone along with his tumor, so he received an iliac crest bone graft. 

My friend Ivan (a nurse anesthetist) in one of the MercyShips ORs    - photocred MercyShips

Ok, side track here for a nerdy and awesome moment of mind-blown-ness. Did you know that we can take a rib or part of a hip bone and use it to reconstruct the missing parts of a jawbone? The incredible maxillofacial surgeons on Mercy Ships do this often. And for Augustin, they took part of his hip bone and used it to rebuild his jaw. WHAT.

 One of our now-recovered pediatric patients 

Augustin only had surgery a few weeks ago, and the post-operative swelling in his jaw will take more time to resolve, but his face looks nearly normal again and he can eat soft foods and talk normally, smile, laugh, and joke with all our staff. He has already been sent to the Hope Center, a step-down centre Mercy Ships operates where patients who have come far for treatment can stay for days to weeks after their discharge from the hospital so they don’t have to travel long distances back to us for follow up appointments. I saw Augustin this weekend, when I changed his dressing and confirmed that his wound was progressing well.  “Did you know,” he said, batting his eyelids dramatically, “that here in Cameroon we rate a nurse’s competency in her job by how well she does dressing changes?”

“Oh?” I said, vaguely, suddenly hoping my scrub top neckline wasn’t too low as I bent to wind Kerlix around the back of his head.

“Yes,” he said mischievously, “would you like to know how you’d be rated?”

“100 percent,” I said emphatically. “You’re welcome. I’ll see you tomorrow for your dressing change.” 

He laughed as I shooed him out of the room to call in the next patient. “I’ll be back,” he called.

Please pray for Augustin that he would maintain a positive attitude, that his hip would heal well – he still has some discomfort there – and that he would also know God’s mercy and acceptance for him.

Thanks so much for your love, prayers, and support.

Tabi