Just visiting

Come with me to a day shift on D ward a week ago:

  I step out into the hallway and see a wheelchair scooting towards me.  The two year old on top is laughing uproariously as she sways back and forth, holding to the rigid casts sticking out from underneath her.  Gladys has tried every possible method of escape, toddling quickly down the hallway anytime the door to B ward is open, excited to make it as far as D ward to visit new faces and fun.  Today she's picked her favorite vehicle, her brother Jon.  John is just starting to walk again after a bilateral osteotomy, proud to show off his duck-waddle on the crocs-turned-cast covers that are duct taped on.  Right behind him Tambo scoots along with his wheelchair and casts, and Bintu struggles to catch up with her walker.

Jon loves to sit and color with his favorite nurses, and seems to find a good reason to visit several times a day ("Football pages, Laura!").  Tambo has decided that he is a doctor, and showed up a few days ago with a stethoscope tucked under his shirt.  Between him and Sandy, we're well staffed! 

Sandy has gone back to surgery...her tongue looks beautiful, and she loves to show it off proudly as she sticks it out at me in between practicing staff names.  She joined us for shift report again on Friday, and shyly joined in the singing.  She'll be going home to Guinea tuesday, eager to show off her new mouth, and will be coming back to us in the fall.  I wish I could be there to see her children's faces.

Just behind me Hardy pulls out his mirror and looks again, a long look, touching his lip and nose where the huge tumor used to hang, unable to stop smiling.  Was it just a few days ago he started reading his new Bible, just yesterday he prayed with sister Clementine to give his new life to Christ?

I looked back at what I had written and realized that although tonight the wards are full, almost all of the patients above have been discharged home.  They're showing off new faces and celebrating life and family and a place in community...and that is so exciting!

I miss them, but I still have my fill of people to serve and kids to love on.  Tambo is still here, making wheelchair rounds with the anaesthetists to make sure they behave themselves.  Isaia, a wonderfully bouncy three, rode down the hallway on my back this afternoon, trying to stick his head under my arm, making faces and yelling gitttatikagittatika  until he got tickled (his current favorite activity).  Mary showed up at the gate last week and had a large facial tumor removed the next day.  She is still working on controlling her saliva and insists on being quite cuddly - the result being a thoroughly soaked scrub top halfway through the shift, and a large amount of drool on my allocations...well worth it!

And in the ICU, surrounded by new patient faces, a family is celebrating the goodness of God.  A successful surgery we could not have done a week ago, a shyly smiling little girl who came close to death is headed home this weekend, and her jubilant father covering all in the blood of Jesus, exclaiming, "Only God could have saved my daughter."

Come down for a visit and join us in praising our amazing God...

Sovereign LORD, you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do?  - Deut 3:24

Praise God in his sanctuary;

praise him in his mighty heavens.

Praise him for his acts of power;

praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

Praise the LORD.  - Psalm 150: 2, 6