I have realised that it has been a week since I wrote - I must be getting slack!
An exciting opportunity has come up since I last wrote. I have been praying for a while for opportunities on board the ship to fill my time. For those of you that don’t know, I do not have many palliative patients and have been left a little adrift (excuse the pun!) without anything to do. I have been asked to oversee the patient life programme on the wards for 6 weeks whilst the lady who leads it is on holiday. The programme involves Alex and I working alongside local day volunteers to provide activities, some basic school teaching (for children) and counselling for the patients on the ship. It is going to be a wonderful opportunity to spend time on the ward and see the patients who are having life changing surgery on the ship. It is also an amazing answer to prayer and shows God’s faithfulness to me at this time. To add to this I am also in the process of writing a teaching session about cancer and palliative care for the local volunteers who work on the ship. I hope that through education I will be able to provide some knowledge for them to pass on to others so that the stigma of cancer is better understood.
These past couple of weeks have seen small breakthroughs in the building of relationships with the few patients that I have. It has been so difficult to get over my Western mentality of wanting everything fixed and out in the open at once!
Last week the father of the lady who lives next to Lake Togo was there at the visit. During the visit he said something that bought tears to my eyes - “I can’t thank you enough for what you have done for my daughter. We are so honoured that you keep coming to visit us. You are now part of our village and part of the family.” I realised that the small things that we had done for her that seemed so insignificant to me were hugely significant for them. Just the trivial act of providing her with simple pain killers had seen her go from depressed and withdrawn to smiling and chatty. It was wonderful to see. We also came away with gifts of more coconuts and a bag of prawns! Today we returned to the same lady. On the surface she seemed the same as usual. None of the family were around for the visit where as during the past there was always someone present. Half way through the visit she suddenly burst in to tears. When I asked what was wrong, Sylvie told us that she is so ashamed that her father is having to care for her and provide for her when she should be working to provide for him. It is a shameful thing in this culture (especially for the eldest child, which she is) to not be able to look after parents as they get older. She was so upset that he is spending what little money he has on looking after her. He obviously loves her and I told her this but love here is not enough. I spoke to her about how in the bible there are many people who mourn and weep, including Jesus. I told her that she needs to show love to her father in emotional ways as well as practical. We spoke about the fact that it is ok to grieve and be ashamed. I felt like in this moment we had passed an invisible barrier of social niceties and that some of her fears are finally being revealed to me. It was both a moment of triumph that I had some insight into her real feelings and of sadness for her for all the guilt, shame and sadness that she is feeling at this time. I am praying for more breakthroughs to be made over the coming weeks with all my patients in this way.
I am slowly settling in to ship life however living in such a transient environment means that as soon as friends are made, people leave. I am finding this difficult but I know that God is constant and I am putting my trust in his faithfulness to me.
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