Life after Africa

Friends, this post is long overdue and I apologize for the delay. Life since I got back from Togo has not slowed down. If anything, it's speeded up into double overdrive and some days I am hanging on for dear life watching the scenery race by.

God has blessed me beyond what I could have imagined. In between snippets of time with friends and family and co-workers, I've also been working and started back up at school. Most of May was with InterVarsity at a camp in the Adirondacks - working on-call and leading small groups and work crew. It was an incredibly busy time but also truly blessed. Spending a life truly focused on God and His glory, and worshipping with hundreds of other believers with that heart really was incredible. And as I pushed myself to the limit I realized exactly where that limit lies, and how important it is to rely on God for everything. It is in my own weakness that I am truly strong.

Come mid-June I headed over to New Hampshire, where I'm the full-time camp nurse at a lakeside Christian camp. I still get to take care of kids, but it's a little different here. They all speak the same language as me. We don't have spontaneous dance parties. Most of them are the same color. I don't get peed on as much. Most of them grew up knowing that they are loved.

They're still kids who need care and love, but are already privileged beyond what they will ever know. There is clean water, and food, and vaccines, and medical care. And while there is still the sadness of broken homes and unloved children and sickness sometimes, there is not the constant tragedy of the poor, the broken and deformed, the outcast, the discarded child. And while my heart still breaks, it's not the constant and overwhelming crush of pain.

I'm still asking God every day why I'm not in Africa. When I will get to go back and pour out into a people that still need to know they are not forgotten. Whether I will be back on the big white Mercy box as a constant and living expression of His love for the lost.

But for while I'm here, let me live that love for these kids. This staff. These co-workers. This family.

The day I was a vampire

There is nothing like living on a mobile blood bank...nothing.

Rewind back with me to just over three weeks ago. I, again, should have been sleeping. Instead I was up praying for Brian and his mama, as I had just heard that Brian had been transferred back to the ICU that morning, and I was sure I would be taking care of him again that night, if he made it that long.

Unable to sleep, I read and prayed for a while, then made my way up to deck 8 to relax in the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, and watch the sun slowly sink into the ocean. I had been up there a few hours and was almost asleep when we heard the announcement, "All crew with type A+ or B+ blood please report immediately to the laboratory. If we do not find enough donors then surgeries may have to be cancelled." I packed up my things and headed down, knowing they wouldn't let me donate again after just 3 weeks, figuring I could help draw samples or units for donation. Less than a minute later I found myself unable to get down to the lab via normal routes; the stairs were already packed with potential donors, and nurses there to volunteer. As I rapidly set up a makeshift phlebotomy station with tourniquet, tubes and alcohol, I heard the next overhead page. "All nurses not currently working, please report to the laboratory immediately." And the floodgates opened.

Most of our patients have type A+ or B+ blood. We have no way of separating blood parts, or even properly storing units, which means donors must be an exact match, and donate immediately before transfusion. Since A+ and B+ are less common among Caucasians, those of us with this type blood and no debilitating illness end up donating often, though even this is not always enough.

An hour later I found myself marveling along with the lab techs at our small miracle. Down from 1 B+ donor left on the grid, we now had several. Enough A+ blood for the next few weeks, Lord willing. Deckhands, ship officers, doctors, galley crew...and the nurses! There were nurses everywhere, donating blood, collecting, and generally helping organize everything. It's amazing to live and work in an environment with such a heart for others. Thank God for my amazing crew mates! And God bless them as they continue their work and service...with just a little less blood now that it's been given away.

Peace and rest

Last friday...

I should be sleeping, or packing, or spending a last few precious minutes with friends. But instead I can only grieve.

I got the call this afternoon, just as I settled down for a little packing and then a post night-shift nap. "Hey Laura...Brian just died. I know you took care of him a lot so we wanted to let you know, you're welcome to come down to the ward." He was 5 months old, and weighed 7 pounds. A whole month of his short life he spent aboard the big white Mercy box with tubes and oxygen and monitors so he could eat and breathe. Was it only a month ago God had reached out his mighty hand and allowed him to breathe again before we put down a tube and began to breathe for him?

Last night he was my baby again, swallowed up in the big ICU bed as he fought for each breath-80, 90, 100 times a minute. Bits and pieces of shift report from the charge nurse floated through my mind, "his heart is enlarged because it's so hard for him to breathe...can't tolerate CPAP again...we talked to his mama already...no heroic measures...he would never come back off the vent...only a matter of time now." I lived the long shift in moments and in breaths. It was a constant prayer: to get back in the IV catheter he had pulled out in his struggles, for healing again, to stop his vomiting and bring down the fever, and with each rapid breath that he would take another one. By midnight I had stopped praying for miraculous healing, and in a desperate "your will be done," I prayed for peace and rest for my little boy...whatever it takes.

He settled only in the safety and security of my arms, so I sat and we cuddled. Sharon and Clare peeked in on my other sleeping patients, brought me food and water, while I whispered to Brian of his mama's love and sang him a promise...

You will be safe in His arms

You will be safe in His arms

'Cause the hands that hold the world are holding your heart

This is the promise He made

He will be with You always

When everything is falling apart

You will be safe in His arms

And we had a small miracle. He rested and slept. The hot little body stayed snuggled in my arms, the oxygen blowing reassuringly in his face and hand curled in trust around my index finger, and he slept.

While in my head I know that baby Brian is better off snuggled happily in the arms of God, eating and drinking on his own and breathing effortlessly, my heart cries for the little mama going home with empty arms and the baby that never had a chance to live. We helped his mama bathe the tiny gray body, dressed him in a white fleece jumper and warm hat, and mingled our tears with hers. She called for each of her nurses by name, those of us who weren't there already, and we filled the room to sing and pray and show her in a language without words that they were dearly loved.

It may not be the miracle that I would have asked for. We had one healing, and like a greedy child I demand why we didn't have another. And while I don't understand it, I pray that it is enough. The extra time Brian's mama had with us, to open her heart to Jesus. An extra month of love with a broken little boy. The terrible, amazing thing is that my desperate constant prayer of that night has been answered in full. Brian has been healed, fully and forever, and he is finally at peace.

Welcome home?

I wanted to tell them it was a mistake. That we needed to turn the plane around so I could go back where I was supposed to be. I may be in the country I call home, but while it is good to see friends and family again I feel like this is the dream, and there is the reality. So as I do the jobs I've committed to do here, knowing that this is where God wants me NOW, I'll be praying and see if maybe I am supposed to go back next year to where I've left little pieces of my heart scattered all over the red clay and wide brown eyes of Africa.

So much happened in the last four months; it's impossible to sum up in a dry and sporadically written blog with a few pictures. I've left out so many pieces of my life because there simply wasn't time to write. Even within my last week aboard, so much happened that I could only be and be a part of...and store up everything to process later. So if you don't object I plan to continue sharing bits and pieces of Africa and my life with Mercy Ships, interspersed with the ministry and life to which God has called me for the rest of this year.

Why me...why Africa?

I was thinking about that question this week, as I prepare to leave and head back to the States. It's easy enough to spout platitudes about helping the poor, to say that I'm a nurse and help heal the hurting. Truly, none of us can take credit for any of this. The more I work in the medical field the more I realize that no matter how good of a job I do as a nurse, it will never be enough. I just do the best job I can, pray, and have to let God do the rest.

So why am I here? It didn't make sense to me at first. An ER nurse going to work on a surgical ship as a pediatric postop nurse; a girl fluent in Indonesian and English going somewhere where they speak French and Ewe. Wouldn't it make sense to go somewhere else, to be involved in something other than surgery? In short, why did God tell me to come to the Africa Mercy?

It was for you my prayer partners to be a part of something bigger that challenges all you might take for granted. It was for the patients and families to see an expression of Christ's love for THEM. And it was for me. I've been strengthened, challenged, stretched, and had my faith deepen in a way I've never known before. I have had my heart broken for the things that break Christ's, and my eyes are wide open.

Life is not all about making sense. That's the wild and crazy thing. It is in our weakness that God can show His strength. Being here, in part, is for me. When I realize my own limitations it is so easy to step back and let God take over. Things that I've never seen happen in the US, things that go against all my emergency training, somehow work. Prayer works, in desperate situations where nothing else does. The prayer, the life, the love and the service is direct contradiction to everything my culture holds up as an ideal, a healthy challenge to a worldly standard. He truly is showing his power in the lives of these patients, my coworkers, and my life. And without a doubt, worship will never be the same after the wild ward church dancing!

Would it have happened without me? Absolutely. Will it go on when I leave? You bet. Can God work in and through my life and talent? That is why he gave them to me. I was here for a purpose. I was here to strip and wax floors and bleach the hospital inside out, to give Mariam my blood when she didn't have enough of her own, to put IV after IV into her and other patients with dehydration and difficult veins. To get a struggling little girl through her first postop night in the ICU, to hold pressure on a bleeding artery, to be CPAP for baby Brian and to soothe and cuddle him as he fought for each breath, to grieve with his mama at her devastating loss. I was here to have long talks with roommates and friends, to give back massages, to carry a love-starved child on my back until she fell asleep. To sing on deck in the sunrise of an Easter morning, to dance with cast footed kids to the beat of the drums, to bring my last gatorade packet to a sick friend or nurse them through an illness...

But if it was only one of these small things that I was here to do, it would be enough...just one.

Angels amongst the Sons of Men...

I wanted to share a poem with you, written by a patient aboard the Africa Mercy last year...a tribute to my co-workers. It's also a challenge to you and to myself, to stop and think about how others see you in your life and work. Are YOU the light of Christ, am I the hands of Christ to a hurt and dying world? And if not, what needs to change?


Angels Amongst the Sons of Men

The day the Big White Whale landed on the black shores of Africa
was a blessed day to the Sons of Men.
It came with Angels to walk amongst the Sons of Men.

Why do I call them Angels?
Let me tell you of my time with them.

I came on board the White Whale
with rooms filled with the lame
the maimed
the formed
the deformed
the wrong
and the rough.

And deep into the darkest part of the night,
I saw men and brethren,
maidens and ladies,
though flesh as us,
yet with hearts as Angels.

Sleeplessly and tirelessly they toiled through the night,
through the pains and aches of men;
they with hands to heal and mend,
bringing from above the Father's love to the Sons of Men.

Some they cut.
Some they tie.
Some they seal,
and yet others they fix with tools untold.

Like messengers of the Most High they came.
Not thinking of their own,
they risked their lives
and sailed the seas to lands beyond the endless world,
to shores of Men afflicted and in pain.
Their hearts and lives they came to share,]
as Angels walking amongst the Sons of Men.

Some in this life are born to pass,
and some are born in life to live,
yet these Angels are born to preserve humanity.

Though some may see lives as waste,
yet with speed they move to save.
With words of love and touch of peace,
they endlessly toil to make right the wrong.

You were born as Men to your lands,
and yet as Angels you served the earth.

Gold is digged from earth beneath.
Treasures are hunted on high seas.
But love so pure and true
can only in hearts like yours be found.
Your labor in the Lord shall not be in vain.
For every life you touch and every soul you save,
For every bone you mend and every face you straight,
The Lord of Life and Light will light your path
and guide your life.

For you are truly Angels amongst the Sons of Men.

noma

No, not Rob Bell's video productions. Noma is a disease that most of us in the western world have not even imagined, much less seen. Photos, inservices, and teaching times aside...up close and personal, noma is a pretty wacky illness. I had my first noma repair patient for the last few days, a full challenge and a half!

"an acute, necrotizing ulcerative process involving mucous membranes of the mouth. The condition is most commonly seen in severely malnourished, debilitated persons, especially children with poor nutrition and hygiene. There is rapid spreading and painless destruction of bone and soft tissue accompanied by a putrid odor...Treatment involves high-dose penicillin, debridement, and improved nutrition. Healing eventually occurs, but often with disfiguring defects."

That's cut-and-dried for, "sorry kid, you don't have a face any more." At 7 years old, that can be totally devastating.

Aimee arrived on the ward a few days ago. She is one of the survivors, the 10% that make it through acute noma to live an ostracized life, hiding the hole in her face with a rag, struggling to chew soft foods when they fall out as she chews...without even daring to hope for normalcy. Graft after graft have failed, leaving a scarred cheek and a scarred heart. One of the blessed ones - her infection was caught early, before it took an eye or nose. She's chunky now, her exhausted body on my back and soft cheek relaxed, tired from the last love-starved tantrum that we ignore, basking happily in the aftermath of love. We talk in pantomime, waiting for the one staffmember that speaks a little of her tribal language to come down so we can explain surgeries and dressings and drains and tubes. Our plastic surgeon had been held up in Europe, airplane grounded by a volcano a million miles away.

As of yesterday, Aimee has a face again. The physicians assistant that brought her from Cameroon came down to excitedly show photos of surgery - of sutures and skin where there was no skin. My night was filled with IVs and antibiotics, NG tube feeds and codeine and JP drains...and mainly just praying hard that our irrepressible little girl with discipline issues wouldn't pull any tubes out or sensitive plastic surgery dressings off. Her bandages won't come off for a few days yet (we hope!), but we know that underneath there's a new face just waiting to smile!