June 5 and 6

June 5

On Sunday I was on-call for the OR. There had been word of a case happening on the weekend but I found out that it had gone ahead on Saturday so I thought I was home free. As I sat by the pool deck reading my book I heard a beeping noise. I thought maybe a machine was alarming (there are lots of noises on the top deck of the ship so it is not unusual to hear beeping)... but no, I realized it was coming from my bag. Back to the OR I went. It ended up being a complicated hernia case that we had done on Friday which needed to come back to the OR. What the surgeon had thought was the hernia re-occurring ended up actually being a huge haematoma (blood clot). We cleaned everything up and made it out of the OR right as dinner was finishing up.

One of the plastic surgeons spoke at Church on Sunday night. He played a really good song at the end of his message that I found quite fitting with the work that we are doing here on Mercy Ships. I am posting the lyrics below for those interested. The song is called Break Our Hearts by Vicky Beeching:

It's time for us to live the songs we sing
And turn our good intentions into action
To bring the kind of worship You desire
And move beyond our self-absorbed distractions

The mountains are shaking
Could this be a great awakening

Break our hearts
With the things that break Yours
Wake us up to see through Your eyes
Break our hearts
With the things that break Yours
And send us out to shine in the darkness

It's time to move outside our comfort zone
To see beyond our churches and our homes
To change the way we think and how we spend
Until we look like Jesus again

Here I am send me
To be Your hands and feet
Here I am send me I will go

June 6

Today I was in the general surgery OR with my friend Sarah. It was just the two of us as nurses so we worked non stop all day! The list consisted of 8 hernia cases with patients from 8 months old to 81 years old! We convinced the rest of the team to give us a 25 minute lunch break but other than that it was go go go until 6pm!

This evening we had a farewell party for Aedzer Hellema, one of the Nurse Anesthestetists on the ship. It was nice to hang out with people from the OR, outside where the sun is shining! Tomorrow we have a full list again so I had better go get ready for another crazy day!