Hernialand

In between nursing orientations for the new nurses, A ward has become my new home.  One side is full of the left-over maxillo-facial patients...the ones with draining wounds or extra-long NG feeds, the ones that we're keeping an eye on for just a little while longer.

The other side is filled with mostly men, 18-60 years old, and almost all here for the same thing.  We have the occasional goiter removal or lipoma, but for the most part we're doing hernia repairs. If we did a thousand hernia surgeries, it would be only a drop in the bucket for West Africa.  With the few hundred we have scheduled for hernia repairs, even the waiting list is already full.

They're not the pretty surgeries...the dramatic facial tumors or child with noma that are the face of Mercy Ships.  There's not much publicity down at this end.

For these men, it's a chance at life in a different way.  Maybe they haven't been a social outcast for years, but inability to work and provide for a family can be crippling as well.

They file in in groups, patient and quiet, and have their tour of the bathrooms and introduction to the ward.  After showers all around, the ice starts to break as they chat among themselves and realize they all have something in common.  I caught my 5 new admissions giggling together like little boys and asked the translator what was so funny. "They are talking about hernias problems," was the answer.  Charades came next, with demonstrations of how to walk and cough and sit up after surgery.  Adam, an admission from the day before, volunteered to teach the class...because, after all, he had already learned it yesterday!

A day or two after surgery, they leave in ones and twos and threes...another living testimony to the work God is doing in changing hearts and lives here in Togo.

There are so many waiting, and so few surgery slots.  Part of our limitations are bed space and surgeons, but a huge limiting factor is also the number of nurses.  In a few weeks our nursing numbers will drop, and we badly need nurses willing to come or stay to fill that hole.  Please pray for nurses to hear God's call on their lives and come to join us for the remainder of our time in Togo!