The Calm Before The Storm

Once again, Peter is on call this weekend so we're having a peaceful, AKA boring weekend on the ship.  Fortunately it's been punctuated by a few fun activities.  Friday night he was NOT on call so we managed to go out to the best pizza restaurant in Lome' with some friends.  We've heard of this place for months but since it's on the other side of this large town we've not been there before.  Fortunately, the ambiance and the food lived up to the hype.  Wonderful pizza, mine was a loaded veggie on a thin crust that I managed to stretch out for two more meals.  Now that we know where it is we'll definitely be willing to pay for a cab to take us there. 

Then last night we were invited to a dockside celebration for the 30th birthday of one of our favorite nurses on board.  Crazy Scandinavian Lina - who can dance all night -was surprised with a bar-b-que dinner for about 20 people thanks to the fabulous Josh and his culinary skills as well as the baking ministrations of Doctor Finona and her bestie- radiology tech extraordinaire, Bridgett from Australia.  They made the most amazing ginger laced cake I've ever eaten.  Not all of my "Mercy Hips" are the fault of the galley's Oompa Loompa diet, is all I'm sayin....

Advanced Team trickling into Guinea

Before we get into the meat of this week's blog post I must first thank all you prayer warriors for a few glorious answers to prayers. 

Here is a picture of our intrepid Advanced Team.  Three of them left for Guinea two weeks ago.  They have had some great success with multiple high level meetings to prepare for the next mission starting in August and they've secured living quarters that they moved into yesterday in anticipation of the rest of the team joining them in the very near future. 

The second miraculous praise is in regards to my sadness about the many, many goiter patients we saw.  Peter has been seeing many of them back prior to their surgeries and not only have some of them actually been cured medically so that they don't need surgery but the surgeon that we currently have on board has made room to do some of these surgeries so it actually looks like all the patients that we worried that they possibly had cancer will be able to get surgery during this outreach!  Thank you God and thank you for all your prayers in this regard! 

So - we've had a pretty boring week but are expecting things to get a bit more interesting starting tomorrow - at least for me since our famous eye surgeon will be arriving and apparently there will be at least a few media sorts hanging around documenting his skills.  We'll be seeing all - ALL the kids back that we've screened over the past four months in the next two days so that he can pick who to operate on to train our Togolese eye surgeon.  We're are really hoping and praying that he will be able to operate on most of these kids since no one wants to see little kids doomed to a life of blindness if there's any hope for an operation. 


Eye Team at end of last field screening day

The other storm we're waiting for is the RAINY SEASON!!!  This past week we had our very last eye team screening day and wouldn't you know it poured!  Everyone's heard of the rainy season in the tropics but I'm sure it's one of those things that you can't imagine it until you've lived through it.  It started to rain on the way to the screening site but by the time we got there about 30 minutes later the rain was coming down in buckets and buckets!  The site is a metal roofed building with open windows and a dirt floor in places so the din of the rain on the metal roof was quite deafening.  Each time we thought maybe it was slowing down it started to rain harder!  This went on for a couple of hours but fortunately it slowed down to a light rain by the time we were done and the rest of the week has been dry.  So - we know its just a matter of time before we get hit with the real McCoy. 

OK - so for weeks and weeks I've figured I'd give you all a riveting view of "A Day In The Life of the Doctors Secord/Linz".  Of course it's a whirlwind and I'm sure you'll be breathless by the end but after sitting around snoozing on the deck with our kindles all weekend I think we're ready for some excitement. 

Peter digging into a snack.  See hot pot at the right

For Peter most days are pretty similar from one day to the next.  He gets up about 6 am and wanders over to our little kitchen-y place to make himself some coffee.  God bless those folks at Starbucks who dreamed up their little Via envelopes of instant coffee!  For the first several weeks he would mozy up to the galley and grab a cup of their coffee which we'd try to doctor up with various additives and chemicals to make palatable but alas!  Our efforts were always in vain.  Most days one sip of this hideous variation on the worst that Army Field rations could only approximate and the swill would go down the drain.  So - we gave up and now make ourselves our am instant and save whatever disillusionment might befall us for something later in the day.  Here's a picture of Peter getting a snack where we make our am coffee.  Since coffee time is usually in his undies I'll spare you all that visage.  Not everyone has a refrigerator in their room so we are very, very grateful that we do as we've been able to hoard things like tuna to make sandwiches when we cannot face the cuisine du jour.  This happens not infrequently. 

Following his coffee Peter then heads off to the wards to meet up with the nurses and other docs to hear about the patients over night and what the plans for the day may be. 
I've posted pictures of Peter on rounds before but this one was taken before we started admitting patients so you can see the actual ward.  Yes, the beds are this close together and amazingly most will later have risers placed underneath with a mattress for their care giver to sleep under the bed.  Sometimes these caregivers bring nursing brothers and sisters with them so you can almost imagine how noisy it is during the day and often well into the night! 

Admissions sm near tent on left. Eye tent far, large tent on right

After rounds Peter and Dr. Fiona divide up their work so one of them will usually go to the admissions tent out on the dock next to the eye tent to do all the admissions work ups.  The other doc will usually take care of whatever needs attending to on the ward.  One of them is typically the doc on call and at night they divide the call three ways with Dr. Kevin, the crew physician who is a family practitioner. 


X-ray machine

The Only CT scanner in Togo!

One place that gets alot of use is the radiology suite since most patients need some evaluation prior to surgery - especially all the maxillo-facial cases that we do since these tumors are often very extensive.   The equipment is pretty modern.  Our CT scanner is the only one in the country and even if we can't help a patient we do give them a DVD of their films so they can show it to whatever other doctors they end up seeing.



tissue processor

On occasion Peter will get called to the lab to look at some weird sort of worm or egg they've found as a parasite in one of his patients. They've even asked me to look at some of the slides at times so that I've gotten to do some microscopic pathology.  Here I am sitting at the microscope in the main lab.    On the left is a picture of the CoolScope that I've described before.  It is an internet based microscope that the cytopathologist in England can manipulate remotely via computer and look at slides we've made and render a diagnosis.  This has been very helpful to our surgeons and a relief to me since I've not done any cytopath in many, many years!  At one point they may have had some histotechnologists and anatomic pathologists on board since they have all the equipment for an entire path lab.  Here on the right is the cutest, little tissue processor I've ever seen!  Each canister is a station in the processing cycle to fix tissue prior to making them into slides.  Now they just take the tissue and submit a few sections to a volunteer pathologist in Michigan.  I have helped with some of the larger gross pathology specimens to describe and submit sections to facilitate getting a good diagnosis but that's about all the pathology I've done here. 

Peter at the "doctor's" computer

The other place Peter and I spend a fair amount of time is the Hospital Clinical Staff office where there is jockeying for computers most of the day as people try to get their work done. There are multiple computers there for team leaders and team members from all over the hospital and most of the day it seems like musical chairs as people look for an open computer to do whatever they need to get done.  Since I've been working on my Operating Procedures project I am sort of camped out here most of the day.  Concentrating can be difficult since it's such a circus most of the time.  The other challenge is this room is easily 20 degrees hotter than the rest of the hospital on this deck of the ship.  The hospital is probably 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the ship.  Thankfully, all I have to do is go upstairs to our room to get more comfortable and usually find some peace and quiet. 

This is another one of our blessings in that - although we can hear just about everything our married couple neighbors do and say on either side of us we do have a private space to call our own.  The single folks - those here less than two years do not have that luxury!  These people - especially the many, many nurses are stuffed into six and eight berth rooms with zero privacy during their stay here.  I really admire how much they sacrifice to serve the patients they take care of. 

Well - this is getting pretty long.  I've already told alot about my days - screening out in Lome' on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings - so I get up at 5am.  I also get up at 5 on Friday's now since we've been doing our marathon laser surgeries for the 30 - 90 patients done six weeks previously to ensure their cataracts don't come back.  The screenings are all finished now and surgery ends on the 17th of May.  Soon thereafter we'll be packing up the tent so the ship can sail away. 





Here's one view of the top of the ship at sunset

Most nights Peter and I take walks up on the top of the ship. It's a nice place to stretch our legs, talk about our day and enjoy the cool sea breezes. It's hard to take a picture of it but it is so interesting to see 50 - 70 container ships anchored off the coast either waiting to come into port or taking advantage of the protection of the Togolese Navy to ward any pirate attacks that are increasingly more common in this part of Africa.


Here is a panorama shot off the back of the ship. 



Here we see 50% of the entire Togolese Navy protecting us and everyone else off the shores of Togo. Just about everything is different here.  In a later blog I think I'll tally up what I'll miss when we're gone and of course, the stuff we'll be glad to say good bye to.  Hope our day in and day out adventures haven't been too much of a snooze fest.  Only a couple more week-ends of call before we leave so we'll hopefully have more to write about in the future.  Have a terrific week.   

A Really Tough Week....

As I've said in previous posts, each week here seems to bring its own adventure and despite having a pretty set routine from day to day we're often surprised by what unfolds around us.  Last week it starting to really sink in that the ship will not be here for too many more weeks.  Each week new people arrive by plane but it seems that even more folks, some that have been here for many months head back home.  Given the 30 years Peter and I spent in the military all these hellos and good-byes are not as new or shocking to us as they are to alot of the crew members.  In addition, since we have each other here we've not formed the really tight connections that many of the single people have formed with each other that makes many of the partings so difficult each week.  There have been alot of tears. 

For Peter and I, as well as Fiona, another difficult aspect of this week was finally going thru the large file folder of goiter patients we had evaluated early on in February.  Since I've been outside the hospital working with the eye team I hadn't really noticed whether or not these folks were getting their surgeries or not.  On occasion Peter would tell me that they were seeing some of the very toxic hyperthyroid cases back in follow up but other than that I didn't hear much.  So, I was quite amazed that so few of them had had their surgeries.  If you recall I mentioned months ago that we had three - yes THREE surgeons cancel their trips to Togo to work with us in rapid succession.  We then heard that soon thereafter three new surgeons answered the call and signed on to take their place.  What I didn't know until last week was that these new guys did not do goiter surgery!  They were just going to whittle away at the massive backlog of hernia cases that we'd seen on that first screening day. 

I found this news to be extremely distressing since we had the added information of ultrasound that helped us triage the patients into those that were worrisome for cancer and those that had a low likelihood of malignancy. 

I've shown pictures of patients with huge goiters before but this lady, in particular on the left is one of the poor unfortunates that was sadly found to be not only with cancer but that her cancer had spread very far and wide and that it would be futile to do her surgery with such a poor prognosis.  Knowing that this is the fate of some of the ladies in the pile of papers we were sifting through made our job even more distressing.  We hope that as the Human Resources folks start filling slots for work to be done in Guinea you will add this outreach to your prayer lists that those that feel lead to be here make every effort to come so that those that do make their way to the ship do not suffer the type of disappointment that I'm sure the majority of people we screened are now feeling when informed that we will not be able to do their surgery.  We screened over 100 goiter patients in Feb.  Since then possibly 6 have been done and we were told we had space for between 4 to 6 additional goiter patients beyond the 20 some thyrotoxic goiter patients that must be done.  I just hope and pray that we were able to pick out the people that God wanted to bring to the ship. 

The other very, very difficult episode this week has been hanging over us for many weeks.  Soon after we arrived in Togo a young lady came to the ship that had undergone a large burn graft surgery by Mercy Ships in the '90s.  Her graft did very well until about three years ago when it started to break down and by the time we saw her she had an open wound encompassing her right chest and nearly her entire right arm!  It was amazing that she could live for so long with such a huge, open wound!  She was admitted for future surgery as our plastic surgeon would be arriving in two weeks. 

Chantal and her nurse after her surgery

This gave us awhile to work on cleaning up her wound and getting her ready for an enormous surgery.  The surgery went well and she was one of the first cases he did during the five weeks he was here.  She did have some complications with wound abscesses that just didn't seem to respond to any of the antibiotics we gave her.  This sort of fit the picture that we'd discovered after she came to us and we found out she was HIV positive.  A fact she did not know at the time.  She had lots of nutrition issues and other problems that took their toll on her as time wore on.  With each passing month on the ship her graft looked worse and worse to the point that she had very little coverage and alot of infected areas that were not improving.  It became clear that she was not going to survive and efforts were made to find some sort of hospice care for her. 

One of the positive things that has come from our time in Togo is the training of some of our workers in the art of hospice nursing.  Currently, Togo is one of the very few countries in the world that does not offer any sort of hospice care to aid the dying and terminally ill.  If nothing else, we are hopeful that Mercy Ships has pointed this out to the local health ministry as an area needing immediate attention. 

Plans were made to help Chantal go to her uncle's home in nearby Togoville where she wanted to die.  Her dying wish was to see the ocean one last time so on Thursday afternoon the pilots room - where the harbor pilot boards and leaves a ship as it enters and exits a harbor -was opened up so she could look outside at the harbor, the boats and the palm trees.  The nurses and day workers gathered to sing hymns and comfort her.  There was not a dry eye on the ship. 

Not surprisingly, after receiving this lovely dying wish she peacefully closed her eyes and breathed her last breath a few short hours later.  Although everyone on the ship had a rough time letting go we were all very grateful to know that during her stay with us she not only learned about Jesus but she accepted Him as her Lord and Savior!  We all look forward to seeing our Chantal again in her new, perfect body when we are together in paradise.  Hallelujah! 

OK - so, we did have some positive stuff happen this week that I'll tell you about so that I'm not responsible for world wide sniffles after I post this missive. 

First - on Saturday we went with one of the eye team day workers to meet her tailor.  Since she is easily one of the best dressed Africans I see on a daily basis I thought that possibly her tailor could work a miracle and make something for me with the lovely material we bought last weekend.  It was quite the adventure since she lives 45 minutes on the other side of Lome'.  I am continually impressed with the wonderful local people we have working with us.  In order to get to the ship she has to take a series of cabs - like shuttle buses that take her well over 90 minutes to 2 hours to get to the ship each day. Since we start our days at 7 am or earlier it is no wonder they try to take naps whenever they can sneak them in during the day.  That - and the fact that due to the heat they typically take siesta every afternoon but we make them work.  It's amazing they put up with us!  Anyway - since I brought her the material my dress with matching jacket will cost me $8 to make and will be ready in a week!  Stunning! 

The other positive thing on the horizon is our upcoming pediatric eye surgeries.  For months we've been scheduling all the little kids with eye problems to come back to the ship the end of April when the founder of the Mercy Vision program - Dr. Glenn Strauss will be here for a few weeks to train our local eye surgeon in pediatric eye surgeries.  All the kids will come in on the 30th and the 1st of May to be evaluated and hopefully he will be able to operate on most of them.  This is also something I'd love for you all to pray about as it is heartbreaking to turn people away.  Especially little kids.  To let you know more about how the kids surgeries go I'm attaching - I hope -a video about a little girl's cataract surgery that they did in Sierra Leone.  You may be crying by the end of it but hopefully not the sad tears that we had from earlier in the week. 

Well - no big surprise - I'm having a heck of a time getting this video loaded since we can't access You Tube from the ship and it won't let me cut and paste into blogger.  So - hopefully this link will work or if you go to www.mercyships.org and find Christina's story you can see the video.  Here goes - say a prayer: 

Have a wonderful week thanking the Lord for all your blessings - especially access to health care. 

A Weekend On The Town

Each week seems more interesting here than the one before.  Perhaps we're becoming more adventuresome or at least more acclimated to our surroundings.  More likely its the combination of hearing what others have been up to on their time off the ship and the opportunity to go somewhere when Peter is finally not on call all weekend. 

So - yes!  We finally had one of those weekends!  But first - I thought I'd post some more fun pictures and even videos from - where else?  The exploits of the EYE TEAM!   For the past three weeks we've been having the last of our series of appointments with our cataract patients where they come for a final laser surgery to rupture the back of the capsule that use to house the lens of their eye.  This is not always done for cataract patients but we do it routinely to ensure that the small remnant of lens that might be left will not develop another cataract and rob the person of their sight again.  It only takes a few seconds apiece so we do an entire week of patients on one morning so there is quite the circus / party atmosphere throughout the entire morning.  Since many of these people are extremely grateful for the gift of regained sight they love to tell their stories to anyone who will listen.  And since this is Africa there is, of course, a lot of singing and dancing.  So - I finally remembered to bring my camera to this festive occasion and thought I'd share some pictures and a video with you all.  

Crew play drums and sing as everyone dances

Close up of baby w/ Candace, the nurse that runs the admissions tent

Hopefully the video will load properly after multiple attempts.  The singing and dancing here goes on for about 20 minutes and then several of the patients give testimonies about how amazing it is to see again after many, many years of blindness.  Going through the paperwork I've been amazed that some of these people can barely see hands waving in front of their faces but now have almost 20/20 vision!  It is really wonderful to be part of such a medical miracle week after week. 

For some reason the video decided to attach itself to the pic of Candace - but after six attempts to load the video I'm not going to start over yet again. 


Our Friday night was quite unusual since things are moving along toward the Africa Mercy's next mission. - Yes - WOW!!  Time to get things moving in preparation for the ship to pull into Guinea this coming August for a 10 month outreach.  Of course several contacts and many visits have preceded the ship's arrival but the real detail work of getting vehicles at the port, a place for people and some patients to stay post op and all the permissions to work and travel in the country have to be worked out and on Africa time.  It's alot of work.  A team of about 8 people started leaving for Guinea this weekend to start doing all this very important work.  We went to the "team house" to pray for each of these hardy souls as well as for their upcoming mission.  The team house is a very large home in Lome that houses quite a few people that do off ships type ministries in conjunction with what we do on the ship.  We only hear about what they do so it was pretty neat to see where they've been living and to hear more about how the advanced team works in country and all the stuff they are responsible.  If you'd like to add the Mercy Ships advance team in Guinea to your prayer lists we would all be very grateful.  It was amazing to hear some of the instances where it was only the Lord's intervention that provided the way for many, many things that happened the way they did when the team did their advance work here in Togo.  It also gives me some more insight into what Peter did for the Navy in all those countries he travelled to when he was setting up the mission for the Navy ship Mercy going to SE Asia in 2008.   

On Saturday Peter and I went out shopping in the town. It was our second attempt to find a gorgeous fabric store in town famous for their specialized African batik fabric.  It is very common here to buy fabric and then have outfits made to measure.  Seemingly every local person knows a tailor that makes all their clothes for them.  As time goes on we try to note who has the nicest outfits in order to maximize the value of the fabric one buys.  Some of the workmanship is really outstanding and the prices are very cheap.  We then met up with some friends at the local artisan craft market that I've blogged about before.  We've been there twice before but are starting to realize that our time here is getting short and we need to start thinking about souvenirs and gifts to bring home!  So - we found some lovely things but for obvious reasons I can't say much or post any pictures! 

Parents with God Mothers

Today was a very special day in that one of our eye team day workers had a traditional "naming ceremony" for his newborn son at his church.  Two carloads of of folks from the ship made the trip to his church a stones throw from the Ghana border.  The parents are on the outside of the group and the "God mothers" (not sure if that's what they call them) are the two in the middle.  Interestingly, the woman holding the baby worked with the mom when the ship was in Togo in 2010.  This was also when the mom and the dad met as day workers for Mercy Ships when the ship was here for its last outreach.  Apparently, the mother and the nurse - Veronica really connected and kept in touch.  How wonderful that she was able to be here for this momentous occasion.  The Father works with us on the eye team and does wonderful work.  The other woman currently works with us as a day worker and we all fight to get her as a translator since her English is flawless after living for 7 years in Jacksonville, FL! 
You will probably ask why they are all dressed alike.  I really can't tell you although it is really common to see people at church or walking from an event all dressed alike.  At first I thoeught they were all like choir members or something.  But no...the choir all wore regular clothes.  It seems that it is usually family members that dress the same when they go places.  It certainly looks classier than the whole family going to Sea World and wearing tee shirts that say "Smith Family Reunion" or something like that.  I guess our sons better watch out for colorful printed shirts that look like dad in their future.

We really enjoyed the service, too.  Peter especially had a good time since he wasn't asked to get up and give the blessing or anything.  They really put themselves out for us as they made sure that everything was translated into English. 

Here's a picture of the pastor in the middle giving his sermon from 3John in French, the translator for the locals that don't speak French into Ewe - the local language and the the man on the left ,who is from the ship translating into English.
 
And then, since you wouldn't know you were in Africa if there wasn't at least 15 minutes of singing and sweaty dancing - here's a video, I hope, of the whole church getting up to dance.  No, Peter and I are not in this clip, but yes - we did dance for quite awhile.  Thankfully there was a washing machine open for our use when we got back to the ship since no, there was no air conditioning in this open air church. It did have large fans and was extremely nice both inside and out. 

Then to cap off the weekend we decided to go for broke, take a cab and head out to a local restaurant for a rare date night dinner. 

So - we've had a fun, interesting and rejuvenating  weekend and we hope that you have, too.

Happy Easter and Merry Godspell to you, too!

So, first of all...my apologies to those of you that look forward to my weekly updates for your a) entertainment, my condolences or b) reassurance that we are still alive - we are.  Last week was more unusual than most for a number of reasons. 

First big news is the follow up on Peter's junket to East Texas.  He is now back and we were able to talk each day that he was gone so I got regular updates on how hard they all were working on the new ship design.  From the very outset he was impressed with how well thought out everything was and how knowledgeable everyone of the committee members were.  It was good to know that such a costly meeting was not a waste of time.  He was also able to accomplish all of his errands for me and the others in the crew that gave him shopping lists.  Since I'm now an official ship's driver I was able to sign up to go to the airport to pick him up on Monday night, too.  Since the trip was not that long and he is such a good traveller he's bounced back and gotten back to Africa time in almost no time.

Since the other two non-surgical docs on board had to cover the call Peter missed when he was gone it's no surprise that this weekend we are hanging out on board so he can take care of all the patients over this long holiday weekend as the call doc. 

So - yes!  Happy Holy Week!  Happy Easter to everyone.  Easter on the Africa Mercy is a real experience and there are many opportunities to really meditate on what it meant for God to become incarnate and live among us and really experience all that life challenges us with. I've been reading a book about Mother Theresa that has really challenged me to think what missionary work is really all about.  The reason she and her missionaries lived in the slums of Calcutta with the poorest of the poor was she knew that by becoming one of the poor people she could actually reach them and show them who Jesus is and in that way some would be eternally transformed.  That's how Jesus came to live among us, to suffer as one of us and show us the way to eternal salvation. 

Seeing her life and His sacrifice makes our life here on an air conditioned boat with running water and flushing toilets and three meals a day prepared for us - not much of a sacrifice in truth.  I hope that whatever little we are able to do for the unfortunate here will help them and that it glorifies God. 

Likewise - we are hopeful that our thrown together production of Godspell last night brought a smile to a few faces and ultimately glorified the one who inspired the songs in the show.  It ended up being fun and people generously praised our efforts but after three weeks of almost non-stop rehearsals I'm quite grateful that it is in the past!  Hopefully in the next few weeks some pictures will surface and I can share a few.  My fear is that some of it may wind up on You Tube and I'll have to wear a brown bag on my head for the rest of time! 

The last two weeks we've had our marketing / media folks join us on our eye team adventures so there are many more pictures of my daily adventures so back to eye team stories, I guess.

So I've told about the process the team goes thru in the past but alot of these professionally done pictures are so nice I wanted to be sure and share them with you.

Nurse Keli shades a patient's eyes to check for cataracts

 Keli here on the left uses a clipboard to shade the eyes of one of the many patients she checks outdoors for the presence of cataracts.  She does an amazing job for several reasons.  Eyes should always be checked indoors to enhance pupillary response.  Not only does the bright sunlight of Africa make this difficult but ALL of these folks have very dark, brown eyes making any contrast between the pupil and iris difficult to see even in good conditions. 

Tosseau follows along with Keli to interpret for her, telling the patients to stand up, where to look and let her know what their problems with their eyes may be.  If they have a cataract or something else she thinks we could evaluate indoors Tosseau give them a small, laminated numbered card that gives them entrance to our indoor screening site.  There is a guard at the door to make sure no one without a ticket gets in.  He's also the one that gets to explain why Mercy Ships is limited in what few things we can do for people on this outreach give our limited resources.  It is common for her to screen between 500 and 1000 people at these screening venues. 

We see alot of children at each screening.  Some of them have surgical problems but most just have either irritated or infected eyes - like most kids.  Unlike most kids - these poor little people have never been seen by any sort of eye doctors so we can use the time to give them educational materials as well as sunglasses to hopefully protect their eyes from the very punishing, bright sunlight here in West Africa.  Many of the cataracts and other eye diseases we see could be prevented or at least delayed with some preventive measures like simply wearing sunglasses! 


Here is a young girl and probably her mother sporting brand new, UV protective sunglasses and smiles on their faces!  We are grateful to the companies that generously donate these glasses for us to distribute!

Here is a good looking family that came to the screening with their two daughters.  I don't think we found anything surgically correctable on this little girl's eye but I think she is so cute and it's such a nice picture I had to share it with you!

This darling little girl is only three months old but has congenital cataracts in both eyes.  This is extremely common here.  It might have a genetic component, sometimes it's due to infections the mom has while pregnant but I've also read it can be due to extreme dehydration in the mom while pregnant.  I find this very, very easy to believe since it is barely April and the temps are getting into the 100's with very high humidity.  The screening days are getting more and more uncomfortable - I can't imagine being pregnant in this weather.  I'm sure most of these moms are dehydrated. 

In addition to eye patients we often have people with other medical problems show up at the screening site.  This is probably where I come in the most handy on the team as I can usually put a name of what the problem is or at least come up with some medical jargon to describe what's happening with the patient.  We take pictures and contact information and then call the patient to be screened back at the ship if we have a surgeon that has the skill set to help the person.  This is always very gratifying to have a hand in getting someone plugged into the system before we end up leaving in June. 

This is Kris - the tech team coordinator helping to get this family the information they need to come to the ship for their daughter's cleft lip surgery.  Kris coordinates all the team's activities both at the ship and out in the field.  She's only 24 and hopes to go to medical school next year so we're praying that she gets accepted! 

 Inside the venue we have interpreters that help fill out paperwork for the patients so that we can get ahold of them in the future if need be.  Not an easy task as most have no phones or real address!

Inside we have a few examination machines - this is an autorefractor that will give an estimate of a person's refractive error if they have eyesight good enough for a glasses prescription.

Here we have our optical technician.  He is a local Togolese man that we had to hire from the Health Ministry as we had a 7 week gap in volunteers!  Usually there is an optometrist that does the in depth eye exams both in the field and at the tent.  He confirms that cataracts are operable and also diagnoses other eye problems and for some dispenses medication.  Unfortunately he is not an Optometrist so I sort of keep a close eye on him as he sometimes does some things that might be beyond his scope of practise so.....

And....since these folks are blind I do alot of patient escorting as there are many stations they have to travel thru and multiple opportunities for them to trip and fall.       Finally, for those that make it all the way thru the field screening gauntlet they see Christianne for their appointment date to come back to the eye tent on the dock outside the ship for their secondary screening appointment.  Of the 500 - 1000 or so patients that show up we will see a few hundred inside and schedule 50 -100 for closer evaluation back at the tent.  We aim to perform surgery on 500 - 700 patients during this 5 month field service.  We of course could do more if we had more ophthalmologists volunteer since we have the OR space so keep this in mind as you remember to pray for Mercy Ships.  Finally, here is a delighted lady clutching her "golden" or rather Pink ticket allowing her to come into the port to see us in a few days for further screening. 

So, there you have field screening - again!  Hopefully next week will be a bit more interesting and have some Godspell in it.  I might be able to find some pictures from the first two YAG laser surgery days we've had thus far where we celebrate these people regaining their sight.  It is an awesome display of thankfulness and gratitude. 

Hope you all have had a blessed Easter and have had an opportunity to reflect on the awesome sacrifice made for our salvation and eternal life with Him.  Hallelujah!  He is Risen Indeed!