One Week of Surgery Complete, Many More To Go

This past week, surgeries began and now 45 people have had amazing, life-changing surgeries. Some patients - like a young woman named Monique who had a small tumour growing behind her ear - have already healed and been discharged. She was very happy and even stayed later on Friday to do the interview we had asked her to do (the journalist was running late). Some patients - like Valentin who had a burn contracture around his middle and was our first patient of the field service - are still here, continuing to heal. One little baby was admitted just so that we could help to fatten her up – she is 2 months old and weighs 4 pounds – so our dieticians are working with her mom to help her gain weight. They said the mom has been working very hard to get the baby to eat anything (she has a cleft lip & palate) and it’s always encouraging to hear about how much love moms have for their children. Some patients – like Julien, the man with the large tumour growing out of his jaw/mouth – are having surgery right now.

Nat Geo interviewing Dr.Tertius on Deck 7.

The people in this place consistently go above and beyond anything that is expected. The OR team didn’t finish until late on Friday and so some of them were in there on Saturday cleaning up, sterilizing and preparing for Monday. The admission team lead wrote a letter for a patient’s mom saying that Mercy Ships requires a caregiver to stay with all patients under 18 and so she wouldn’t be able to go to work for a while because her son was having surgery and she needed to stay with him. Much of the engine room team worked on the weekend because we had some issues with the generators that needed to be fixed (something about governors not working…I don’t understand these things). Our hospitality team worked hard on Friday afternoon to set up the Queens lounge for the visit by the First Lady, and the crew endured not being able to use the room for 24 hours. Our HR Director brought up homemade coffee to the Nat Geo crew on Saturday as they were preparing for an interview with Dr. Tertius (and the coffee got used as a prop for the interview). One of our dining room team leads was working hard serving us breakfast and then ran upstairs to lead us in worship before our Monday morning meeting (still wearing his lovely uniform). One of our lab techs worked on Saturday to ensure that all the necessary tests had been completed for Monday. I say this not to show that we are always working, but rather to show the amount of love that the people on this ship have for others. They are always thinking about the little things, like a visiting guest from the IOC (who also trained us during Basic Training), making the whole ship his delicious cookies several times over the last week or so. There is nothing quite like warm chocolate chip cookies!

Rodrigue interviewing our Managing Director in his office.

This was another hectic week – I hosted a radio journalist on Monday and Friday, and was a little surprised when many of the day crew greeted him by name. They recognized him from TV or radio. It seems that he is pretty well known locally. That was a new experience for me. He also recorded me giving him a tour of the whole ship in French, which was so nerve wracking, but I survived and was helped by some of our lovely French speaking African crew. The patients and day crew were excited to see him and many gathered around to be able to share their stories. It’s pretty remarkable to hear day crew tell him that what we are doing here is really good, and that we take such good care of people and that the most important thing they want people to know is to have hope! We also hosted a large group of people from the American Embassy and I gave a tour of the ship to the U.S. Ambassador (which I thought was hilarious considering how many Americans we have on board). It was wonderful to be able to give a tour in English and share many of the amazing stories I have heard, and to see how touched they were by everything we are doing here. I feel very blessed to have this job because sitting in on interviews means I often get to hear the most wonderful stories. This week it was listening to patients share their stories of healing with the radio journalist, and listening to Dr.Tertius (our plastics surgeon) share his story with Nat Geo. It’s pretty amazing, all the work he is doing. He spends 10 months of the year away from home, away from his wife, doing the work that God has called him to. He works with other NGOs when he is not with Mercy Ships, and also tries to raise awareness about the need for access to safe surgery for much of the world’s population.

From right to left: Our Managing Director, Robin; the U.S.
amabassador, Lucy; Laurette, Robin's wife; Lucy's husband.

This week has also been full of emotional growing pains as I work out what it means to be vulnerable. Now that I have been made aware of a lot of the false thinking I had, and the idol I had built around being strong, unemotional and not caring what others thought, it’s been hard to find that balance. How to care but not be destroyed by the littlest things? Who exactly am I without those things, without those walls? How am I to behave, how much do I share? I always thought that the goal was to reach a point where I didn’t care what others thought of me, but now I’m realizing that that is the very thing that has impeded me from having deep and meaningful connection with others. I realized I often only share completely processed thoughts, but there is something to be said for sharing raw emotion, or raw unprocessed feelings, allowing room for the input of others, before having it all figured out. The other side of that vulnerability is understanding that I need others. That seems to be pretty obvious, yet still a hard thing for me to admit. That I do need others, that I need others to encourage me and pour into me, the way I pour into them. I think I felt like, I should be sufficiently filled up by God to be able to constantly pour out into others, but someone pointed out that often God uses people to fill us up. I am so grateful that He has brought people into my life to share wisdom when I need it. This kind of emotional growing has been painful at times but I know I will be stronger for it, and hopefully closer to the woman God wants me to be.

The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. ~ Deuteronomy 31:8

Three of the beautiful children who will be having orthopedic surgery to fix their club feet.