Wednesday 6 June - Off the boat

Well the day started at 12:30 am when a pipe broke on deck 4 and they sounded an alarm. We had to get out of bed, dress and report to our department. All of that within 7 minutes from the alarm sounding. Needless to say I was a bit sleepy trying to get up at 4: 15 so I could get ready, eat and get up to roll call at 5:25 to get in the boats at 6:00.

Last night on the flight deck they had a bunch of pallets where they usually play basketball. I looked closely and some of the pallets were actually plastic-wrapped garbage containers, but most were pallets with the Latter-day Saint Charities logo. There were about 45 pallets from us that I could count. I was told it was 26000 pounds of supplies we had sent for the city of Manado.This city has a branch and will help distribute it to 9 local charities there.

Anyway, I was great getting on the bandaid boat. I didn't get to see much as I was sitting nearer the front and had the cover blocking most of my view. My on-shore assignment was to list the patients' ID band number, their name, if they were a patient or escort, if the chest x-ray was positive or negative for possible TB and the Dr who read the x-ray.  I also had bought 6 smaller packages of Starbursts and broke them apart and a bag of individually wrapped Lifesavers and had them in a zip lock bag. I had stickers for the kids and I also had about 200 hygiene kits in 2 duffle bags and a small child roller travel bag. The roller bag had Winnie the Pooh on it and I was told to give it to a small child to keep.

So with my 2 student nurse interpreters, Andrea and Joann, I was able to navigate the people. I logged the information into our book and would give them a hygiene kid and/or a candy and stickers. It was really hard when we had someone with the chest film not normal. Since we can't run any further tests, if there is something unusual on the chest we have to say it is positive and they can not come on board. If the escort is positive and patient negative, they can see if they can find another escort and have them come back and be x-rayed. Sometimes they were scheduled to go right out to the lst boat, so they had to run and find someone or come back the next day with them. If the patient is positive they are turned away. It was so sad to have to tell the girls to tell people what they need to do and really sad when it was the patient and had to tell them that we can not do their surgery. I had one 10 year old boy who was positive and to tell his dad we could not see him. They were sooooo sad looking when they were told to go home.   There was one patient who was ok and her escort was not and I had a patient who was positive and escort (who is LDS and med student) was negative and told them sorry and then 2 or 3 patients later was a lady whose escort was positive and she was from way out of town and had no other family. I told her to go find the LDS guy and see if he would be her escort. Well , they met and he did become her escort and he almost became another person. I Felt like I had a win win with that and the young LDS guy got to come on the boat.

I did not get to stop much for lunch and the girls had my bag locked up so no one would steal it.i gave them 100000 rupees ($10) and told them to got buy me some different food to try and the green pancake coconut/syrup roll and some foods that are vacuum sealed to take home for the family to try. I was the only one for our group that did not get out of the hospital so did not get to shop. They bought me 2 kinds of main meal roll/fried and cocoanut covered cake balls filled with liquid brown sugar and other good stuff. One of the meat fried things had a green chile pepper stuck in the top. You bite a piece of the green pepper then bite the fried meat pastry. So I tried it pepper and all. It was good then burned your tongue and lips. Fun to try things. They laughed at my face with the heat.

They we're really cute girls and I told them to spend what ever was left. I had a great time with the girls and I'm trying to speak the language. Everyone wants to take your pictures and not just one time but every time you pose with someone else they all want a picture. Just so funny.  Got some of the people with the hygiene kits and kids so you can see some of them. I felt really blessed to get to go out there and hurt so bad for those we could not help. There were so may we had to turn away that had waited so long and didn't even get into the hospital to be screened.

What great blessings we have. I guess we need to make sure the health care in the US does not come to the haves and have nots. So glad to live where if you are sick you have the equipment and medicine to be taken care of. I will not whine about the little simple thing that do not go my way.

Thanks for all your emails and love. I can feel the prayers and blessings from all of you.