Up and Running!

We are officially up and running!

I'm in there in the back somewhere, promise :)

Last Monday the hospital opened its doors to our first couple of patients in our second Madagascar field service.  On Tuesday morning at 8am the first surgery officially started!  The entire hospital had an air of excitement on board as this is the moment we’ve so anxiously and patiently been waiting for.  One of the many things I absolutely love about Mercy Ships is how we are not shy to embrace the entirety of a patient’s journey to health.  Poor health and physical abnormalities are not just problems we sew and suture up then send out the door to their new lives.  We recognize that for most of the cultures and populations we serve, we are also helping heal their souls.  We realize that we are no more capable of being hands of healing than the next person sewing or suturing back home across the Atlantic Ocean. 

So what makes this place so different?  Our transformations are not solely ones comprised of physical change, but of spiritual as well.   We look at our gifts as nurses, therapists, surgeons, and dieticians as not gifts of our own.  Our skills are God given skills that were specifically placed into our capable hands.  When God says “go and serve the least of these”, we take him seriously.  At the beginning of every shift we gather together as nurses and day crew and pray for the oncoming shifts.  We pray for our patients both for physical and spiritual healing, and we pray for the nurses starting their shifts that they would use their gifts to serve the people of Madagascar. 

 

For all of my nursing friends back in the states I’ll give you a peek into shift work on the unit.  We have three shifts on the ship.  A day shift (7am-3pm), an evening shift (2pm-10pm) and night shift (10pm-7am).  On Tuesday and Wednesday last week I had day shift and evening shift orientation.  It was a bit chaotic due to the ship being delayed and having such a large number of nurses needing orientation.  And on Friday I started my first night of four on my own.  The nurses come from a variety of backgrounds whether it be PICU, adult med/surg, peds med/surg, NICU, adult ICU, adult oncology, peds oncology, hospice, L&D etc.  It really is quite fascinating to meet these incredible people with such different areas of expertise.  It helps facilitate a team approach to our work on the wards.  In any situation you have no knowledge in there is always a nurse who is an expert in that field willing to jump in and help (which has been incredibly helpful to this NICU nurse who isn’t quite sure how to handle a patient who can talk back to you). 

I can’t even believe all the ways I can already feel I am growing as a nurse and as a person.  I am being challenged in so many ways and I am so in love with the challenge and the Malagasy people.  There has been a lot of stumbling through the Malagasy language but it’s worth it to see the smiles or laughs from your patients while they watch you completely mispronounce “Are you having any pain?” But it’s worth it to start feeling like you can communicate better with your patients. 

Speaking of communication you are probably wondering how on earth we work with such a huge language barrier.  Let me introduce you to our incredible day crew.  These amazing Malagasy people work side by side with us to work as translators and help us love on our patients.  They help us get to know our patients better, break down the cultural divide and teach us incredible and amazing things about Madagascar.  They are such a fun, vibrant bunch that I am learning SO many things from.

 I know I've posted this picture before but here are all of us together, nurses & the day crew

As of right now we are currently managing mostly general surgery patients and soon to be starting our plastics surgery rotation.  For general surgery this mostly includes hernia repairs, circumcisions, benign tumor removals, lipoma removals, and neurofibroma removals.  I can’t tell you enough how incredibly gracious and thankful the Malagasy people are.  They bounce back so quickly from their surgeries and never complain.  Its breath taking to watch the excitement in a patient's eyes when there is no longer a 15 lb lipoma gracing the back of her shoulders preventing her from sleeping comfortably or wearing her beautiful clothing.

I could go on and on with everything that has happened this week but I could never find the appropriate words.  Outside of work has been a ton of fun with the community on the ship.  Lots of card games, movie nights, trips to the beach, dock cookouts, dance parties, glow stick parties, and trips to the local market. 

 The pool up on deck 8

It's finally starting to feel like home

 

We have arrived!!

We have finally arrived at the Mercy Ship!!  I cannot even begin to explain to you the excitement we experienced on the bus as we pulled into port on Monday evening.  The bus ride from Tana to Toamasina was a long 10 hour, windy ride through the absolutely breath taking country side of Madagascar.  It was a great time to sit back and reflect on the work we have decided to lay down our comfortable lives to do.  The stories of the rest of the volunteers are inspiring.  People have quit jobs, left incredible homes or apartments, left their families and friends for some time periods as long as 2 years.  All to serve the people of Madagascar.  It is an amazing environment to be welcomed into.  Four hundred people both medical and not have come together with a single purpose.  To help serve the forgotten poor in the world.  To heal not only their bodies, but their souls.  There may be communication barriers at times, but radical life change and love for these people is felt.  That is for sure.

 

It has been a VERY long week of lectures, orientation, training and living in community.  So I’m sorry for already being so terrible in writing blog posts.  Things are finally settling down so I should be able to write more posts as the weeks go on.  For the majority of the week it has been a lot of information overload.  Lectures on the different surgeries we perform, scrubbing the hospital down from floor to ceiling (not an exaggeration, every inch of it), safety procedures, how to live on a ship with 400 people, how to order 25 cent coffee at the Starbucks café (yes, that’s right I said 25 cents… thanks Starbucks), how to find your way around the ship, how to do your laundry, where to eat in Toamasina, where all the incredible beaches are, taking entire hospital group photos with the ship, trying to get all the times of the community meetings down and learning how to take a shower in under 2 minutes…

Ice cream social at midships

 

All in all, life has been incredible.  The moment I boarded the ship my heart felt at home.  It is an amazing feeling to know that you are exactly where God is calling you.  I feel like a sponge, soaking up every inch of the ship and every medical procedure we perform.  I want to know all of it.  Every morning so far has felt like Christmas morning.  And today, we get our first patients and tomorrow surgeries start.

When I have more time I will write a post giving you a tour of the ship as well as posts on the specific procedures we perform on the ship!

 I am excited to announce that for the time being I am working on the plastics/ortho ward.  Plastics surgeries will be our first round of patients and these will include surgeries to treat burns, perform contractures releases using split thickness and full thickness skin grafts, treat syndactyly/polydactyly, remove lipomas and benign tumors, and debulk neurofibromas.  I am incredibly blessed to get to expand my nursing skills and knowledge.  My nerves definitely are getting the best of me at times, considering this falls nowhere in my area of nursing expertise, but I am excited to learn from both the seasoned nurses in these areas but also the incredible patients here.

We have been lucky enough in our minimal downtime this week to explore some areas of Toamasina including some restaurants, ice cream parlors and beaches.  So I’ll leave you with some pictures of this week!

 Movie night with stove top popcorn!

Saturday brunch for the nurses

 Riding a pus pus through town

 

 Vanilla Bean because its Madagascar of course

Incredibly delicious ice cream parlor 

Cramming four of us on one pus pus 

 

Our beautiful ship off the beaches of Toamasina

 

Love you and miss you all!

Antananarivo

My stay in Antananarivo (Tana) has definitely been an adjustment.  After learning the ship will be further delayed, many of us were definitely disheartened (especially those of us serving for a shorter time).  Most of us are antsy to get to use our skills and start working on the ward with patients.  We are learning quite a bit about waiting, being still and learning to live in a state of “rest”.  Definitely much harder for me than I imagined. 

We arrived late Saturday night into an extremely small airport where we had to be processed through without visas and then patiently wait for our bag.  While standing in the baggage claim area you could turn a full 180 degrees and be able to walk both back to security and out the door to the plane in a matter of a couple feet.  Pushing and shoving are also quite common so standing your ground a bit is a must or you’ll never get your bag.  Our guest house, Ny Telomiova, is one of the many houses where mercy ships stores its volunteers before the long bus ride to the coast where we meet the ship.  Originally, we were only to spend Saturday night in Tana and wake up early morning Sunday to drive to Tamatave.  Instead we ended up spending over a week in Tana when all the delays were said and done. 

 

The local tourism in Tana is almost nonexistent.  As you can imagine, Sunday morning was our first full day in Madagascar so we were itching to explore the capital.  We soon realized that any place mentioned to us as a good spot to go, needed to be spread out over our week here visiting so we could have something small to do every day.  If we heard there was a good restaurant to eat at, it would be marked as a full day event on the calendar, even though we could only stretch the activity to a couple hours at the most.  Our boredom the first couple days was overwhelming at times.  We could only read so many books, take so many naps and learn so many medical French phrases every day.   We soon developed a daily routine that seemed to help the days go by faster.  Every morning at either 8 or 9 am we would go to breakfast in the main seating area.  There, Voula, Preesca and Freebce would have coffee, baguettes, tea and jam set out for us.  We’d typically eat slowly, spend an hour sipping coffee, talking and patiently wait for our tired eyes to wake up.  Around 10am-1130am would be prayer/devotional time.  This would possibly vary depending on the day but we thought it was important to continue to pray for the ship, the patients traveling across the country to receive their free surgeries or medical care and for us volunteers who had to learn to rest and wait in the meantime.  Then at 1130 we would have a group exercise class on the top balcony.  Melissa, a pediatric ICU nurse from San Diego would teach barre class and strength training.  After working out, we’d all shower and then have to decide our plans for lunch.  Typically, this consisted of a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a couple pieces of fruit.  The shoprite down the street has been our saving grace.  Every day we usually fit in a quick visit.  There we’ve purchased bread, blackberry jam, peanut butter, some fruit, wafer cookies, playing cards, freeze dried coffee and juice.  The guest house provides breakfast and dinner every day so lunch is the only meal we have to provide for ourselves.  Dinner has been absolutely delicious almost every night.  It ranged from chicken, to pork stew, to fish, to zebu meatballs.  Without fail, the power goes out every evening.  It gets dark every night around 530 so dinner is typically by candlelight.  We got so used to it that any night with electricity we’d miss our nights by candlelight. 

We’ve been able to complete most “tourism spots” in the little over a week we’ve been visiting in Tana. The capital of Tana is crowded, busy and very dirty.  The central part of the city sits on a large hill surrounded by green rice fields and large expanses of red soil being made into bricks.  The prime ministers palace and queen’s palace sit empty at the highest points of the hill.  On Sunday we ventured out of the house with Febreece to explore the prime ministers palace and museum.  The museum itself was hardly larger than your average bedroom size and contained a large amount of random historical pieces all shoved together.  Most of the tour could be completed by making a full 360 degree turn while staying in one place. 

 

The most exciting tourism spot we got to experience in Tana was the lemur park.  The amount of different lemur species was fascinating.  Ranging from King Julius lemurs to nocturnal lemurs… all were amazing to see.  They were absolutely everywhere and were not shy about running alongside you or posing for pictures.

 

On top of a couple museum tours and the lemur park, we found a couple restaurants with pretty delicious food.  We ended up spending a ton of time at these restaurants playing cards, drinking cappuccinos and stealing the VERY limited wifi.

 

I'll wrap up my week in Tana with a bunch of pictures for you all to enjoy!