Its hard to know where to begin... I think I've spent the majority of this week in some state of shock! The dynamics of this ship are incredibly interesting. There is over 300 staff, that include 35 different nationalities. I'm not even sure how many floors there are on this ship as it is a giant maze with lots of dead ends and secret stairways. I'm constantly turning around! I live in cabin 7C (near bottom, front of ship) with 5 other girls; 2 from the U.S., 1 canadian, 1 New Zelander, and 1 from Switzerland that is leaving this Sunday. Most are ward or OR nurses, and one a dental equipment sterilizer.
On work days, my day starts around 0630 with breakfast and off to work by 0700. The nurses give report to the oncoming shift and we pray for the upcoming day and patients together. The day shift works 7am-2pm, evening shift 2pm-9pm and night shift 9pm-7am. We work 5 shifts one week and 6 the next, getting every other weekend off. The ward is on level B, as well as the lab, X-ray, CT, 2 OR rooms, engine room, bank, post office etc... Because we don't have any place to store blood, the lab has a list of ship mates with their blood type on the wall and if a pt in the OR should need some, a matching ship mate is paged overhead to the OR room to give blood! Its a walking blood bank :)
Eye/Cataract patients are quick, easy surgeries and go home the same day. Yesterday I got to take care of a sweet 60 year old man that was blind in both eyes. Because there are so many here in Ghana with cataracts, in order to help more, the surgeons fix only 1 eye so there is time to cover more patients. I got up early this morning to take him down to the mobile eye clinic were they removed his eye patch. He sat there for a few seconds and then we said...Can you see!? and he got a huge smile on his face and said yes! He started shaking all of our hands and laughing. We then took him to the chart and as where before he could only see the very top letter E....he could now read all the way to the 2nd to last row! It was amazing to see. He left to walk home on his own!! The ship's name is Anastasis which means "Resurrection" in Greek, where the ship was built. It really carries out its meaning, huh!
For major surgeries, the patient comes to admissions the night before to be oriented and sleep over until they go to the OR in the morning. There is alot to be covered during orientation for these patients as many have never seen a hospital, toilets, a ship, or white people before!! There are usually always two surgeons on board. They group patient's surgery's based on what the visiting surgeon can preform. For the next few weeks, we are doing mostly Maxillary-Facial surgeries... this includes removal of HUGE benign tumors, burn scars, cleft lip/palate patients. Although wound care, treatments, medications are mostly the same, the diagnosis are extremely different! For many of these facial tumors to be fixed, they have to take out a part of their infected maxillary bones (jaw), and replace it with a bone graft from the iliac crest (hip bone) or rib, and then take skin graft from the thighs!! ouch!!! If these tumors are left untreated, many would suffocate to death as it cuts of their airways or are not able to eat.
These patients are TROOPERS, even with huge dressings, extensive wound care, nasogastric tubes, and catheters, many are fine the 2nd day post-op with tylenol or motrin!! In the states... I gaurantee we would be dishing out loads of morphine and codiene!!! For the ones that don't speak English (about 1/4) we have translators at the bedside to help out. The two other main languages they speak are Ga and Twee. In the afternoon we are given time to take our patients out on the Aft deck to play and get some fresh air. I can't really say that this port is very senic... the port side consists of huge barge machinery and big, metal containers for exporting... i think its mainly rice and cement. I have been told if you look over the railing at night on the ocean side, you can see local naked Ghanians swimming in the water with rice bags they have stolen from the shipyard, ha!!! There are hundreds of fish that hover by the ship at night! I am told that near Christmas we will move onto more plastic surgery, cleft lip, cleft palate and VVF (Vesico-Vaginal Fistula) patients.
I am feeling rather comfortable on the unit, it feels good to know all my preparation was not in vain! Working with nurses from Sweden, England, Australia, Canada, Germany, etc. i'm sure will keep things interesting.. as everyone has a their cultural preferred way to preform tasks, even outfits... they still wear pleated dresses and skirt uniforms in many European countries!!! And because all medical supplies we use on the ship are donated and sometimes ancient...we are constantly having to figure out how that particular piece of equipment from that specific country works! crazy.
Today I went into town for the first time as well. Walked about 30 minutes to the marketplace. It is a FEAST for the eyes, nose, stomach! Smoked fish heads staring at you, woman frying plantains, pig noses, cow back skin, mashing tomatoes, carrying platters of fruit with huge knives on their heads!!!!!!!!! Oh and they have a stand where they sell snails in their shells bigger than my hand. They lady had to constantly pick them off the ground and put them back onto the table :) Many of the stands consist of walls of beautiful, bright and intricate patterned fabric. I found some nice blue fabric and hired a local woman to make me a wrap skirt. On the way home, I had some fresh pineapple and a coconut, water & pulp... delicious! cost 75 cents :) even better. I will try to capture some of this stuff on my camera in the future... they want you to build a relationship with them first. Also, not able to take pictures on the nursing ward, only when we take them to the upper deck, There are a few patients I already want you to meet. I'll try to get them on here next time :)
My big Friday night plans consist of the nursing girls going into town to the gas station (local hangout and night club) to have a pizza party. I'm told this will be interesting! I have no doubts, ha! This coming Wednesday I go to the Sister's of Charity HIV baby orphange to just "play". I'm having a blast :) I downloaded some photos on the link to the left to give you a tour of the ship. I had a ton more but haven't figured out how to get past the max megabit limit per month yet.. i'm working on it
Love
steph
