FABULOUS weekend in Ghana!!

So.....where to begin.......
I'm engaged to be married to a wonderful man named Alex Williams! But, I guess that's really the end, so I'll try and start at the beginning-ish.

We first met Sept 14, 2009 at the Introductory to Mercy Ships (IMS) program in Tyler, TX. We became good friends during the next 7 1/2 weeks of IMS and Gateway. We went our separate ways in Nov, him to the ship and me home; but reunited again Jan 24, 2010 when I arrived to the ship. What happy day that was!! For the next week we went to diving school and became certified SCUBA divers. After I had been on the ship for a week and two days, he asked if we could start dating/courting. I happily said "yes!"

So the last four months have been wonderful, a few ups and downs as we have gotten to know each other and each other's pasts. But overall, it has been a time of building trust and becoming even closer friends. Living in such a close community situation, we do a lot of things, and go a lot of places together. Which I love! :-)

Needing a break from the close quarters of ship life, we (my roomies, Alex, and Esther) decided to go to Ghana for the weekend. After a few times of thinking it wasn't going to work out, due to work loads, not being able to get days off, and sickness, we finally decided we would go for only two days instead of four.

The six of us packed up and headed to Ghana Friday night, after the others got off work, where we traversed the border at night - which was pure craziness!! We eventually got a van and driver for the nearly four-hour drive to Wli Falls and arrived there at about 1am.

Slept in Saturday, and decided to go to the lower falls which was an easy 45 min walk, instead of the 5hour hike to the upper falls (which we did Sunday morning). We got there while huge group of local schoolchildren were there on a field trip, so we just waited around and admired the beautiful waterfall, and the numerous bats that reside there. After a while, several people, including the schoolchildren had left. Alex said "wanna take a walk with me" to some rocks that were right next to the falls. I said "sure". After looking at the beautiful falls for a few minutes, he took my hands and said "have I told you I love you today? Because I do, very much." Then he talked about how the last nine months have been the best of his life so far, and that that was because I was part of it, told me that I was his best friend, and said several other things (sometimes he's a bit of a rambler). By this time I had figured out what he was going to ask so I got excited and started squeezing his hands, maybe a little too hard! Oops! Then he said, "you're a nurse, you know about heart rates" and I said, "let me guess, your's is up right now?" Then he reached into his pocket and brought out ringbox with a beautiful diamond ring in it, and said the magic words - "will you marry me?" Of course I said "Yes!"

Alex yelled "she said yes!!" and there was lots of cheering and clapping from the other five girls, and all the other people that were there. After much hugging and kissing, we went back over to where the girls were waiting and gave hugs all around. We didn't have a bottle of champagne, but Esther was prepared, she had brought along a some gummy coke bottle candies, so we each took one and toasted them and then ate 'em!

So.....that was my weekend!! I think I may be the happiest woman in the world right now!

VVF Land!

It's finally here! After months of hard work by our VVF coordinators, a busy day of screening, and few hours of bleaching - VVF Land is open!

So far 66 women have been screened for VVF surgery, and amazingly, most of them (60) are viable candidates. So, for those of you who don't know what VVF stands for, it is the acronym for 'Vesico-vaginal Fistula'. Basically it is a hole between the bladder and the vagina (I'm a nurse so I don't get embarrassed by this word. Haha!) It is usually is caused by obstructed child birth, and it causes the woman to leak urine constantly. I was able to work with the VVf patients a little bit last year when I was here, but hope to get to even more this year.

Sometimes it is hard to find these women that so badly need our help because they are outcasts in their society and hide, or are hidden away. So it is wonderful news that we already have 60 patients. Several of them are here because a patient who had VVf surgery on the ship last year, in Benin, went with her brother to the places where they knew these ladies were, and brought them, or told them to come to the ship. It is always nice to see people who have been helped bringing others to get help.

So our first three patients had their surgery yesterday, May 25th, and are doing great so far! I'm looking forward to seeing the wonderful transformations in these ladies over the next weeks. As they go from being embarrassed, ashamed, and rejected; to smiling, outgoing, and confident.

Here are a few pictures of some of our beautiful patients from last year.

Tumbu Terrifica

Ok, so maybe it's not so terrific when it's your own body the Tumbu fly larvae has invaded, but when it's in someone else and you get to help remove it, it's pretty cool! I think this may have been my best 'International Nurses' Day' ever. So this whole week has been International Nurses' Week, but Wednesday is the actual 'official' day. Earlier in the week, Alex had shown me and my roomies some red zit looking spots on his arm and one on his stomach. At first we just thought they were pimples, or bug bites. But when we looked closer, we could see a black spot in the middle of the areas, and so we jokingly said "ooh, you've got tumbu in your arm!"

Last year Becky (ward supervisor and my roomie) had a tumbu larvae in her leg, so these spots on Alex brought that back up, and he picked on her incessantly about it. Since we couldn't figure out what the spots were, we decided to try and pop them, but couldn't, and they just got a big red area around them.

After several more opinions from different people, including "infected bug bite", "hmmm, probably tropical boils", Becky started thinking it really might be Tumbu. So, lucky for us, Ginger had just received a package from home and it included some scalpels she was going to donate to the OR here. So, we got a pair of tweezers and a #15 scalpel, and Becky went to work with me and Esther observing and assisting. The first spot on his arm WAS a tumbu! We were so excited! Next spot on his arm was another Tumbu! This was getting better and better; Alex was getting a bit horrified, but he handled it well.

We decided that Alainie needed to be there for the last one - in the stomach - and we also called a few other nurse friends to come watch. So after assembling everyone, Becky went to work on the third spot. This one was much more difficult to remove because it was already starting to dig deeper in to the flesh. But after much slicing, squeezing, pinching, encouraging, sweating (Alex), a couple groans of pain (also Alex), and anticipation, we had the last larvae out! Unfortunately, the larvae died during this process, but we kept them anyway to show off to people.

In all, the whole thing took about 30 minutes (not including waiting for people to come), and six nurses - OR nurse, ward supervisor, translator coordinator, ward nurse, and two wound care nurses.

So, the moral of this story is this - Make sure someone else gets the Tumbu in them, because it's much more fun to be the remover than the removee, and don't be the Tumbu, because they die in the end.

Documentation!!

What I learned from nursing school:

if it isn't documented,

it wasn't done!

Last week was one of the most difficult weeks for me so far. It was a busy week, with several really sick patients. By the end of my four day work week, I had worked in all the wards at least once; because I got shifted around to where the more serious patients were. It started out with giving 2 and 3 hourly tube feedings to two little cleft lip/palate babies - Marius who had had his surgery, and Obrien who was still gaining his strength so he could have his; and ended with sadness as we celebrated the beautiful life of Obrien, while at the same time mourning his death, that seemed to have come too early.

Obrien was the beautiful little boy we called our "miracle baby". He had had a rough time of it since his arrival. A few weeks ago, he got worse off when he aspirated (inhaled) some formula into his lungs and got aspiration pneumonia. We had put him on a little bit of O2 (oxygen) "blow-by", but after this happened, he wasn't able to keep his O2 saturation levels up high enough. So next they tried CPAP, which gives the patient slightly pressurized air, so that the lungs stay inflated better. He still wasn't able to keep his O2 up for any extended time. After more than an hour of trying different things, the Dr. and nurses decided that the only thing left to do was intubate - put a breathing tube down his throat and let a machine breathe for him. This was not a good situation, because he was so malnourished that it was very questionable that he would ever be able to come off the ventilator.

As the two nurses were getting the supplies ready for intubation, they noticed it had gotten very quiet over by the bedside. they looked over to see the two doctors praying over Obrien. After preying, one of the doctors took the O2 mask off and placed it beside Obrien's head; his O2 levels started going up, he stopped having to struggle so much to breathe, and was finally able to rest. His heart rate, which had been up very high, came slowly down to normal. Although it was hard for them to believe at first, they finally realized they had just witnessed an amazing miracle.

So it was hard for me to understand why this little baby, who had had such an amazing miracle worked in his life, died. Maybe God knew that this little life wasn't going to be in this world very long but still used him for His glory, because He knew that with all the difficulties this outreach, we needed to see such tangible proof of his continued presence and love for us.

I feel so honored and privileged to have been able to care for Obrien during his short, difficult life; and will treasure all the memories of him for the rest of my life. Please pray for his family, especially his mother. She is such a wonderful person and one of the most loving and attentive mothers I have ever met. Please also keep the crew in your prayers as this has been hard for all involved.




Little Obrien in the ICU.










Obrien, his mama, and nurse Kristen















Marius when he first came.














Marius after his surgery.