Difficult shift

Tuesday evening shift turned out to be difficult-- at least emotionally. I mentioned Borkai in the last entry. He is the 14year old with cancer on the left forearm. Yesterday morning, I happened to eat breakfast with Dr. Greene's wife. Dr. Greene is the orthopaedic surgeon handling the case. His wife told me that he contacted their son in the states who is also an orthopaedic surgeon who did a hand fellowship. He also consulted an oncologist. She says her husband has about 5 doctor friends at home he can consult for advise. I thought this was awesome, because I really wondered how these doctors knew how to treat such a variety of surgeries here.

It was decided that 2 of Borkai's fingers and a small part of his hand needed to be removed. He was having a really hard time with this. He was crying before surgery and didn't want to go. He finally followed his nurse Keri(from Ohio) to the surgery area.

Hours later he came back from surgery crying almost hysterically. I guess this started in recovery when he woke up and saw the dressing on his hand. We could not calm him down and his blood pressure and heart rate were high. Keri sat with him and took care of things while I paged the doctors for orders. We ended up giving him Valium which did not seem to help the crying, but his blood pressure and heart rate improved some.

Over and over again he kept saying things like, "Why did they do this to me...,I am a cripple,...I will never be able to do anything,...I will never have a girlfriend,...I will never hold a baby,...Nobody will be my friend,...I came to Mercy Ships for better healing than this,...why did they do this!!!...". This was all being said through hysterical crying and this went on for over an hour.

There seemed to be no talking him out of this. His 18 year old sister was there, and other family and he wasn't listening to anyone. I do have to say Keri--his nurse--kept calm and did a great job through all of this.

You want to tell him that life will be fine, that he will be accepted, that he has his right whole hand and can do anything, etc., etc. The truth is it might not be ok. I am not fully educated on Liberian culture, but what I do know, is that deformities are often not accepted. Kids often don't go to school with any kind of deformity because they get made fun of. I have even heard that sometimes these people won't even go to church because of criticism. People are afraid because they think things like these are curses and they will catch them too. Plus the fact that he is a 14 year old young man doesn't make it any easier to deal with such a serious thing.

I had a talk with his 18 year old sister Finas. I told her it may be months if not longer before he will begin to accept it. I am hoping once it heals, he will realize he will be capable of almost anything. The family seemed fully aware that this was a life saving measure. Finas told me that he had had surgery to remove this tumor at JFK hospital in Liberia at least twice before and it kept growing back. Although I am pretty sure it wasn't diagnosed as cancer then, JFK told them he should have his forearm and hand amputated and the family said no. I was relieved to hear this because although the family consented to the surgery, I thought maybe they would experience anger or blame toward Mercy Ships. This doesn't seem to be the case though. Anyways, more happened, but I don't feel quit comfortable sharing it all at this time. I heard he had a rough morning, but I also hear that he is doing better this afternoon.

On a lighter note, Rita is doing awesome. She has learned to use a wheelchair and she is very good at turning it. Katy took her outside again and read with her, so things are good.