The Joy of Loss

“This man is the happiest amputee I’ve ever seen”

The words “joy” and “amputation” rarely find themselves in the same sentence, but for Mohamed, the two unmistakably found one another like close friends.

After a terrible accident, Mohamed’s left arm was torn and twisted to the point of inability of use. He worked as a taxi-car driver, and had since been unemployed, fighting constant infection of his left arm prior to coming to Mercy Ships. After months of antibiotic treatment and waiting for healing, Mohamed was left with an arm absent of feeling or movement and a continuous battle with osteomyelitis (infection of his bone). I still remember seeing him come into B ward with his left arm wrapped up in yellowed gauze; a handkerchief holding up his arm as a sling. The smell of the infected wounds permeated to whole ward. I knew we needed to have him shower and then have his dressing changed. My dear friend, Rachel, (or “ward nurse Crooks” as we endearingly called her), was caring for him that night. I recall us catching one another’s eye and giving each other a knowing glance. With that, she got him into the shower and I called the doctor.

For West Africa, his wound and dressing care was actually quite good. There was real gauze and not pieces of dirty cloth and plastic like I’d often seen before. As we unwrapped the old dressing, you could see where the body had attempted to heal itself around the open shards of bone that protruded from various points along his left forearm. I had never seen anything like it. Using a bowl, basin, and 3 chlorhexidine sponges, Rachel and I gently cleansed his arm and removed the smelly dressing. We kept checking with Mohamed, asking him if he was experiencing pain as we washed over the open areas. In return, he just smiled and shook his head no, providing further evidence that his arm was absent of any feeling.

His countenance seemed better that evening after a shower and fresh dressing, but I noted an aura of heaviness that still surrounded him as I finished up my evening charge shift.

That next evening I returned for another evening charge shift and was met by a radiant, smiling face from B20. Mohamed had come back from his above-the-elbow amputation, and he was beaming with happiness. It seemed so ironic that I had to stop and consider what situation I was truly looking at. I was processing through all of this as I greeted him in Krio, asked about how his pain was, and shook his right hand warmly. His left arm stump was elevated on pillows with a clean, white pressure dressing wrapped snuggly around it. All I could think to myself was, “this doesn’t make sense”.

As the shift went on, I continued thinking about and considering what this man had been through, not only physically in the last 24 hours, but over the past 6 months since his accident. He’s had a (nearly) dead, hanging limb that has been constantly infected for the past 6 months. The weight of it physically with carrying it in a sling and needing to perform wound care, financially with not longer being able to work and needing to see various doctors and take rounds and rounds of antibiotics, as well as the emotional burden of not feeling like the same person he once was would be enough to break any man. And so here he sat in bed, smiling away, ready for his new start.

Dr. Bruce, his surgeon, was thoroughly convinced that he could get much better use of his left arm with the fitting of a good prosthesis. And as far as prostheses go, Sierra Leone is the best West African country to be in because of their excellent prosthetic clinics following the civil war. What an incredible blessing for him. When his wife came to visit him on the ship, they joyfully chatted with one another, their eyes full of hope and happiness.

Every day following that I saw Mohamed, he was smiling, free of pain, and free of the weight of 6 months of struggle. Up until the day he was discharged, one of the attributes all of us nurses gave to him was,

“This man is the happiest amputee I’ve ever seen.”

And so he was.