A home for the healing

There is a place we send our patients after surgery, after discharge, just a few kilometers into the city. We call it the hospitality center. For those who have traveled far, will need cast changes or follow-up care, and need to stay in Lome. It's a place of song and dance, of happiness and healing.

I went to visit a few weeks ago for the first time...just hopped in the back of a land rover, along for the ride with a few discharged patients. As we walked into the center I wondered just how many patients I would know, how many would still be here and healing. Just a few steps into the hallway I realized it would be quite a few. Smiling fit to burst and hobbling towards us as fast as they could on crutches were three of our discharged patients. Liberty climbed up and patted my cheek as I exclaimed over her walking progress. Bo, who spent 4 days on the ward crying because he thought we had taken away his nice brown legs and given him yovo (white) legs, lost his crutches in the rush over to say hi and just hung on to my legs. Eram, who spent almost a month with us and knew every nurse by name.

We hugged and grinned and chatted - our bits of French and Ewe and their bits of English, and a lot of hand motions all mixed in. And then we headed out to the courtyard. I didn't know it could get even better.

"Tata LAURA (Auntie Laura)," 4 year old Komla started hollering as soon as he saw me. "Bonsoir tata LAURA!!" Mom smiled and waved, and I headed over right away to pick him up and twirl him around in a crazy hug. This was my buddy who sang in the shower in the early morning of his surgery, who was always ready for a high-five and a hug, who looked forward to his Q4hour neuro checks because it meant that I tickled his toes. My token pediatric patient for the high school student shadowing me...as I taught her assessment and nursing skills Komla decided to learn too, and fell in love with my stethoscope. It never ceased to amaze him as I put the rubber tips in his ears and diaphragm on his chest, his whole face lit up and he would shout, "boom boom boom boom" in time with his heartbeat.

He wiggled his toes for me and showed off new candy-cane striped casts with a protective piece of rubber tire on the bottoms. "He walking now," mama informed me. He put his fingers in his ears and asked me, "boom boom?" "Next week," I promised, I would bring the stethoscope.

11-year old Abe waved and politely asked in pantomime if he could borrow my camera. I went over for a hug with him and handshake with dad. Abe had been our star patient for several weeks. He came in with chicken legs - kneecaps far behind his legs and feet jutting forward - a result of antimalarial injections in childhood. He stayed incredibly cheerful through several difficult surgeries, blood transfusions, cobbled-together wound vacs, and a multitude of confusing hospital procedures. Now his legs stick out straight as he proudly hugs his very own water bottle, joining in the balloon fight.

Anna, one of the other ward nurses, pulled out her djambai and we had an impromptu dance/praise party. The dirt pounded up between my flip-flops as I hugged Komla and danced, with him clapping energetically and singing off-key in his little boy voice. The mamas smiled and sang and danced, and asked us how we were. The kids hobbled around crazily on their crutches, showed off whole lips and palates, proudly sported name tags from all the visiting nurses. It was a wild and beautiful afternoon.

These are the kids who had cried, who weren't sure of the yovo nurses that smiled and gave them balloons and promised that they would play soccer again, who we had soothed through nights of pain with a gentle hand, a morphine injection, a quiet evo, evo, babade, baba (it's OK, it's all OK, it's over now). Here they were smiling and running just as fast as the crutches would go. I can just see Jesus sitting here with a few cast-footed kids on his lap, pounding away on the djambai and singing praises to God along with the rest of us, telling the mamas and the babies "see, I am here. I have not forgotten you."