It's raining today

I was supposed to work this morning, but got cancelled which is a good thing, because I had a hard time sleeping. I got up for breakfast, then took a nap. Last night they had aerobics for 45 minutes in the international lounge. It was Billy Blanks Tae Boe on the big screen! It was very very difficult. I think I worked off the nestle crunch bar I ate that day. Not much going on today, but I just remembered some things to share from the other days...

On Saturday night they showed a film on the war in Liberia. Boy was I ignorant. I really knew nothing about the war at all or that it was very recent. I believe it was going on until 2003. It is still not stable here they say. But it is much better. There are UN vehicles everywhere. I have not talked with liberians on a person level as of yet because I haven't worked much, but I hear that they do share there stories of how the war has affected their lives.

On Tuesday I had a 4 year old boy that I was sending to surgery for a lesion on his eyelid. His left eyelid was almost shut, and the underlying tissue was all red and terrible looking. The doctors made their rounds in the morning and I was supposed to send him off, and then they cancelled the surgery because they wanted to clear up infection first. As soon as the doctors walked away, the mom started crying and the little boy just lay there with this sad look on his face watching her. She was devasted because she thought she was coming here to fix her son's eye, and now we were sending her home. I almost cried too because I felt sooo bad for her. I have a four year old nephew, and I can't imagine seeing him in that condition. We have translators and disciplers from liberia on the ward at all times, and one of the disciplers started encouraging her and quoting scripture and telling her that this is just the beginning and God has a plan and he will take care of them, etc. I was blown away at how God just spoke through this discipler. I had to send the little boy home on eye ointment and oral antibiotics and that was a challenge. The pharmacy had coated tablets that were kind of hard to crush, or liquid. The liquid had to be refridgerated and be refilled in 10 days. The little boy lived far and they only had access to a small cooler type thing so it was not practicle to trust it would stay refridgerated or that the mom could make it back in 10 days. We had to go the route of tablets, so I taught the mom how to peel off the coating and break it up.(the pharmacist assured me that is was ok to break up this antibiotic.) It is the little things you have to think about. I would not have thought about them not having a refridgerator. He is scheduled to come back for follow up at the end of June.