I promised to write about my screening day experience. (Smile) It is funny to me that it seems like I blog a bit delayed from the actual date of the experiences. You’ll have to forgive the mark this processing time leaves in my communication. The following excerpts have been especially difficult to express. While so much of what Mercy Ships does is life-changing and life-bringing, there is always another side to that coin. Those we are not able to help and have to leave behind.
Screening Day
What a day of intense emotion. In fact, I cannot think of a similarly, polar-opposite experience of joy and deepest sorrow as I was a part of that day. Joy when, as I moved through the waiting line (queue) of people, I easily identified patients I knew we could help, sending them up through to the gate and into the old U.N. facility to be screened. My heart would leap for joy with every club foot, cleft lip, facial tumor, and bowed leg. “Yes!” I wanted to scream to them, thinking that it could somehow drown out the hundreds of feeble, heart-torn “no’s” that seemed to, in droves, preceded and succeeded every “yes”.
One woman, slender and middle-aged, with a red dress and matching red head wrap stood solemnly in line as I attempted to ask “What is the problem?” She stared blankly back at me as I turned behind me with a needful expression towards Jonathan, my translator, for help. Instead, a woman standing in line behind her prodded her with words I could not understand, and after a minute of interaction stated “She is from the provinces.” And, pointing to the moderate sized goiter present on the neck of the woman in the red dress, relayed, “She has had this (pointing to goiter) for over 15 years”.
Knowing full well that Mercy Ships had very limited (if any) general surgery slots for thyroidectomies (thyroid gland/goiter removals), we were only passing very large goiters through to the screeners. With as much gentleness as I could muster, I explained the situation to the woman behind, showing pictures of the large size of goiters we were looking for on an educational poster. This message was passed on rapidly to the woman in the red dress who, upon hearing the news, looked at me with eyes full of pain and disbelief. No longer was she solemn as she wept loudly before my eyes. She began crying out and speaking rapidly in her tribal language as she wept. As I watched this woman’s grief, I came to find out that she traveled all the way from the provinces (the cost which would have been a huge sum of money) 3 months ago when she heard the ship was coming. She had been living in Freetown these entire 3 months, waiting for us to arrive. She cried out “I have been stricken for 15 years, and now I must return to my village still with this? And not only that, but I have lost over 3 months of wages waiting!” I fought with every nerve in my body to hold my emotions together as I watched this woman weep. I placed my arm around her, and all I could say was “I am so sorry. I know- you have given so much to come. I am so sorry.”
Nothing prepares you for that. No amount of training or education. No number of hours of experience. All I can hold onto are the words which Dr. Gary Parker spoke the day of our first screening; “God has hope and a plan for every person who comes to screening. That plan, however may or may not be with Mercy Ships, but he does have a purpose for each one.” Perhaps it was just being treated as a human being, worthy of love. Having someone touch them, or look them in the face and treat them as a person. Whatever it might have been, I can only pray that God continues to hold those whose hope in Mercy Ships has been shattered.
While this screening day experience was heartbreaking in one hundred ways, in the hundreds of “no’s” I told expectant faces that day, another situation hit home even harder.
I’m sure you all remember my little friend “Christophe” (not his real name-pictured to the R) I mentioned in a previous post. He was one of our little long-term patients in the Ponseti casting program for his bilateral club feet. He and his father were familiar faces within B Ward and became endeared to my heart quite early on. His little 4-year old body was tiny enough to be the perfect size to pick up and carry around (despite with his thigh-high casts). This became a daily routine as I often worked charge nurse on B Ward, and soon I would hear “Anna!” and watch Christophe tummy-scoot/army crawl across the floor towards me, his casts dragging. Then, as soon as he would reach my desk, would look up expectantly and say “Anna, moosik”, or “Anna, balloon”. And I would pick him up, look over my shoulder and shoot a quick smile to his father, and give him a big bear hug before scrolling through my IPOD songs to find some music to plug into the ward speakers. You would have thought he was a bit of an 80’s rapper the way he would grab one of the little travel speakers and, holding directly up to his ear, would begin moving and dancing in my lap to the beat of the song. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I started referring to him as “my boy” and made sure to at least visit daily if I wasn’t on B Ward that day working.
Well, last Tuesday I was scheduled for an evening shift, but was up early getting some needed things done prior to my shift. I happened to just stop by the ward that morning, and as I was just nearing D Ward, one of the nurses on duty caught me in the hall and said, “did you know Christophe is leaving?”
“WHAT?!” I responded in disbelief. “What do you mean?” The nurse went on to explain that little Christophe’s feet bones had fused together, making the Ponseti casting inadequate to treat his club feet.
“He needs surgery to have them break and re-set his bones, but if he has that surgery now, it will affect his growth, so they need to wait until he is at least 10 years old, so they’re sending him home.” As I fought back tears of disappointment, I saw Christophe and his father being escorted back to B Ward from our Physio room- his thin, bare brown legs now open to the outer air. They both had the most somber faces I had ever seen on either of them- I knew they understood what was happening. I followed them into the ward, picked up my bare legged boy after tickling him under the chin to get a little half smile, and, with a translator, told them both how sorry I was. His dad gave a slight smile, and then sat on his bed looking dejected. As I left the ward, I couldn’t hold it together any more… I walked faster and faster down the hall to my room knowing the waterfall of tears would begin at any moment. I just wept over that sweet little boy and his father. “God, WHY? I don’t understand!”
I still don’t understand, but, that evening, as I said my goodbyes to him and his father, we prayed over them-dedicating them into God’s hands. After we finished, Christophe turned to me and said (through a translator), “When I come back next time, I will see you!” That was it. I smiled and choked out “I pray that I will be”. The faith of even this small child. How much I need to learn from him.
”At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.’ ”
~Matthew 18:1-5~
No comments:
Post a Comment