It's an overcast Friday

It feels like it's been a while since I've written. I worked evenings on Monday, Tues, Wed. Tuesday I had just a few patients that were on an isolation ward. One of them is 17 and has MRSA. I don't think MRSA is as common here as in the states. My two patients seemed very bored, so we tried to teach the lady to crochet (which is hard when I really don't know how to crochet myself) and I made a friendship bracelet (like the kind we used to make in 6th grade) with the boy. This was probably not the best choice of crafts for a 17 year old boy but he knew how to do it and I was at a loss for what else to do. I feel like I am not very good with communicating with the patients sometimes . I don't know if it is a language or cultural barrier or what. Other people are good at it though, so maybe it will just take time. Crew members can "adopt a patient". Basically, a crew member will pick a patient and come spend time with them and talk to them etc. Later that night, the crew member that "adopted" him (a 20 something Scottish boy) came and put an isolation gown and gloves on, and went into his room and chatted with him for quit a while. He then went and got his bible and came back and chatted with him some more. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall and see how it's done. I don't know where I would begin with talking about the bible with someone. What passage would I go to etc.



Yesterday, Thursday, I went to Victorious Refugee Camp and Battery Factory. It is an orphanage with 30 children ages 1-17. A 7 year old girl fell backwards and hurt her arm. A few of us nurses brought her back to the house and I was asking her to stand and flex both arms so we could see if it looked broken or dislocated. While we were doing this I had to stop one of the house moms because she had both hands on the child's arm and she looked like she was trying to put it back into place. I guess you do this in Liberia where healthcare is not the best. Mercy Ships has rules about not just taking people from the community on the ship to help them because it would end up happening all the time. The way Mercy Ships works, is they do screenings and then they schedule surgeries. Ines (a German woman from the ship who goes to this orphanage twice a week) called Island Pediatric Hospital which is free to see if they had any orthopaedic doctor there and they don't. She then called the Mercy Ship crew doctor for advice. We ended up taking her to the ship to xray the arm, and indeed it was broken. Now they are trying to decide whether to try to squeeze her into the surgical schedule here next week when the new ortho docs arrive or take her to JFK Hospital where there is one orthopaedic surgeon for the whole country. Apparently at JFK they are somewhat crooked and would charge too much money if they see white people with the patient. It really made me feel fortunate that I live in a country that will take care of a broken arm even if you don't have insurance, etc. A lot of what we see on the ship that is orthopaedic are broken bones from years ago that were never fixed and now they are here so we can fix them. We where thinking, wouldn't it be nice to actually fix this girls arm properly now, so she doesn't end up like a lot of these other people. I am just praying they can do the surgery here.