Bed 13

Here is a quick patient story from the past week--

So there is this patient in Bed 13 who I adore. He is from Sierra Leone and having his second surgery aboard our ship. He injured his eye 9 years ago and has no vision in his left eye. His first surgery a year ago didn’t take due to infection in the eye after the ship had left his home country. So he made the day journey to Guinea to see if Mercy Ships could help him once again. Once arriving on the ward, he was one the most stoic people I have ever met. You had to drag words out of him, and at that sometimes all we could get was a shake of the head or a hand gesture. Up until last week I hadn’t had him as a patient yet, just interacted occasionally with him. Then one wonderful day I had him as a patient, and from there on out had him for about 4 straight shifts. He eventually warmed up a little and I seized the opportunity to interact with an English speaker. I began forcing him to talk, not taking simple responses for an answer. At one point I may or may not have even said “use your words”. I was at the end of my rope, so I resulted to plan B-- just basically pestering him for awhile until he opened up. One day I was sitting next to his bed doing wound care, and I honestly got trapped between the two beds and the team of people rounding on the patients. The result was me sitting there for about 20 minutes, and at the time I honestly thought “arrg! I have so much to do, I don’t have time to get stuck!”.  But there was definitely some divine intervention in this moment. Because I could not leave I just relaxed and decided to make the most of our time, and it turned out to be a gift from God.  I somehow asked the right questions and he just began to talk in full sentences. I heard about the educational system in his country. His hopes to go for business school and eventually to study in Europe or the US. He is amazingly intelligent, and we had fantastic conversations. He began asking me about the Lord and what I believe. Over our time together he was constantly searching for new things to read in the Bible and to strike up a conversation about the Lord. Over his stay, he even began interacting with the other patients and caregivers. It was fun to watch his personality transform, and I hope that he will remain this way. With his fantastic English, it was hard to remember that he is actually a native Krio speaker. (Krio is the language of Sierra Leone and is basically a mix of broken basic english and Creole words) When he would speak with the other Sierra Leone natives I would honestly do a double take, it was weird to hear his beautiful English broken down to the basic speech. He just makes my heart so happy, and is one of those patients I will never forget. It’s stories like his that I want you to hear, and know how much good is happening here.  On a fun note, the thing I enjoyed most about my time with bed 13 is that he and I had face off’s on the memory game. He was a stellar opponent, and loved to play at any free moment. He would call me over, and say “Hannah, quit doing nursing work, it is time for me to WIN you at memory”. No matter how many times I would say, “You are going to BEAT me” he never mastered that phrase. So “I’m going to win you” stuck. The pictures below are from one evening when the charge nurse had out her camera taking pictures for patients. He yelled “Deb! take our picture while I am winning Hannah!” But then he couldn’t hold it together for her to take one. Instead what we ended up with are a bunch of him laughing and falling all over the place and me laughing at him. In my opinion they turned out perfectly.