i'll let loose with your praise

What a week.  I'm very glad it is Saturday.

On the weekend, the ship is very quiet, as many people are out for the day or on overnight trips.  I really enjoy the calm atmosphere on the weekends.  The Internet is faster, you have you choice of places to sit in the lounges, and it is just generally pleasant. 

This week was a little tough.  Eye surgeries began again and we currently have a surgeon with us who is a Mercy Ships first-timer.  To say the least, he was a bit slow and wasn't too familiar with our system.  We had a couple of 10-hour days, but things are looking better.  Wednesday was particularly crazy: in addition to 11 patients, our OR had two needle-sticks (OR personnel getting stuck with a dirty needle or instrument), AND a patient had to be admitted to the ward post-surgery due to high blood pressure (254/142 !!!!) and urinary retention.  It was a very busy day!  Thursday was a sad day for the Eye Team as my peri-operative nurse, Ellen, left the ship to return to her home in Switzerland.  Ellen was a cheery and hard-working teammate and will be missed!  Luckily a new nurse, Lorraine from the U.K. arrived Thursday night, so I will get to work with her on Monday.  

Friday morning, my teammate John and I went on a site visit to the town of Waterloo, about an hour outside of Freetown.  We were going to meet with a pastor and to see his church as a potential screening site.  Right now, we are looking at doing additional screenings on Fridays at rotating locations throughout the Freetown area.  The church turned out to be a very nice facility and it is looking good for it to be a screening location.  I drove a bit on the way back, as part of my lessons on learning to drive a stick-shift.  We were almost back to the ship as we approached a roundabout.  To set the scene, traffic was pretty thick and slow-moving; I was in the left lane on our side of the road, when a poda-poda (the ubiquitous 20-passenger vans) drives up onto the sidewalk on my right in order to get around a taxi in the right lane.  In doing so, the poda-poda scraped the corner of the taxi and then came to a stop diagonally in the road, blocking both the taxi and our Land Rover.  The taxi driver immediately got out, walked up to the poda-poda, opened the driver's door, slapped the driver (!), stole his Walkman-style CD player and then returned to the taxi.  At this point, the poda-poda driver got out, walked to the taxi, pulled the taxi-driver out, and then hit him back.  A slapping/punching/shirt-grabbing/choking fight ensued.  John and I could do nothing but lock our doors and watch!  A few passers-by joined in the mayhem when eventually a traffic cop appeared.  He took the poda-poda driver by the shirt, threw him back into the poda-poda, and motioned him along.  I'm pretty sure he didn't get the CD player back.  This is law enforcement in Africa.  This is Africa.  

Yesterday was also our first YAG day.  YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) is a type of laser and is used to treat patients during their 6-week post-operation appointment after cataract extraction.  In non-scientific terms, the YAG treatment helps prevent the recurrence of the cataract.  YAG days mark the final appointment for a given patient, so it was fun to see some of the memorable patients from several weeks ago. 

 Looking back, these patients were nervous, scared, quiet, and sometimes even stone-cold on the day they arrived for surgery.  Now, six weeks later, they are laughing, smiling, shaking hands, and so thankful and happy with their results.  PTL.

Psalm 51:7-15 (from the Message, emphasis added)

   Soak me in your laundry and I'll come out clean,
      scrub me and I'll have a snow-white life.
   Tune me in to foot-tapping songs,
      set these once-broken bones to dancing.
   Don't look too close for blemishes,
      give me a clean bill of health.
   God, make a fresh start in me,
      shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
   Don't throw me out with the trash,
      or fail to breathe holiness in me.
   Bring me back from gray exile,
      put a fresh wind in my sails! 
   Give me a job teaching rebels your ways
      so the lost can find their way home.
   Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God,
      and I'll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.
   Unbutton my lips, dear God;
      I'll let loose with your praise.