Saying goodbyes

Yesterday I wrote a blog.  I can't say it was the best that I've written but it had some information that you may (or may not) have wanted to read.  Anyway as I was finishing up, I deleted the whole thing by accident.  Oh how I did laugh (weep).

So to start again, with the biggest news.  This time in 1 week I will be about to get on a plane to come home.  Yes, 1 week.  How crazy is that?  After 11 months away and almost 15 months with Mercy Ships I am coming home.  How did I make this decision?  The main reason is that I am emotionally and physically exhausted.  I always knew that working through this year without a proper break would be tough, but little did I know.  It has been the most incredibly demanding year with so many ups and downs, so much laughing and so much crying.  I have grown in so many ways that I never imagined.  I prayed about staying with Mercy Ships in another role that was not so emotionally demanding however the more I thought about it the more I realised that there is very little else I would rather be doing here.  And that makes me happy to know that I am right where God wanted me to be.  Being stretched, challenged and pulled in so many different directions but at the same time growing in myself and in Him.

So now God is moving me on.  What to do I am not totally sure yet.  What this year has taught me is to be at peace, to not be anxious about what tomorrow holds.  Who knows if I will get a job straight away but what I do know is His provision.  I have spent the past 20 months without any reliable source of income.  But I have not been short of money once.  Stepping into His provision and out of my own has totally changed my view of money.  When I was earning I had enough but it never seemed to be enough.  Now I have nothing it feels like I have so much.  Isn't that amazing?

As for my work here, things are slowly winding down.  The ship is becoming more and more deserted as more and more people leave.  The hospital closed its doors to the last patients last Friday and now is eerily quiet and deserted.  There is a buzz around to get the ship packed up and ready to sail.  Of course everything that moves has to be tied down which is no mean feat.

And while all the activity flows around us, we continue to say goodbye to our little flock, those we have left in palliative care.  We have 3 patients, all elderly ladies, who we will hand over to the hospice this week.  We have all known it was coming but it is still hard.  We are so blessed to have found The Shepherds Hospice.  The hospice staff are all experienced and well trained in palliative care.  They know all the issues surrounding the patients.  They also know the importance of good symptom control and pain relief.  They are also the only medical facility in Sierra Leone to be able to supply morphine.  Last year it was so hard to leave my patients knowing that there was no one for them to rely on.  This year, I know they are in safe hands.
If you want to know more about the hospice and fund raising efforts, please see the following: www.ukftsh.org.uk, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12343178,

I am also trying to finish off the other part of my work, the Burkitts Lymphoma programme (see my earlier blog).  This has definitely been the toughest part of my year.  As with all cancer treatments, some will respond and go in to remission, some won't.  That is the case with my Burkitts kids, despite statistically their chances being higher.  I have sent several children home who appear to have responded to the chemotherapy and are hopefully in remission.  But I have also sent several home having done all we can including 3 little boys in the past 3 weeks.  Two are in the hospital right now.  We have seen it coming for a while of course, seeing their tumour not shrinking as it should, seeing their little bodies become thinner and their bellies bigger (a classic sign of advanced Burkitts).  But it is still a shock both for us and the parents when we have to call a stop to the treatment .  I'm not a paediatric nurse and I never will be.  Developing ways of seeing a child dying in front of you is something I would have never anticipated doing. 

All this would have been easier to cope with if the children lived in Freetown but none of them do.  Burkitts is know to be partly caused by malnutrition and malaria, both of which are extremely common in children from the more remote parts of the country (even more so than in Freetown).  So they all travel from the furthest points of the country to get to us.  If they lived in Freetown we could care for them palliatively, refer them on to the hospice when we are gone and know that they will be comfortable and pain free for the time they have left.  As it is, we can only do what we can and send them home with as much pain relief as we can gather, hoping that it will be enough to last them.  I know that we have done all we can for them.  We have given them some dignity and given the parents some understanding of their condition so that when they return home they will not be rejected and outcast as so many are.  But you know the thing that breaks my heart the most?  That point when, after hearing that their child is dying, the mother will still bless us and thank us for all we have done for them. 

And that is, I think, the best way to sum up why I am here.  Knowing that through what I have done I have bought a little bit of hope and peace to those lives I have been entrusted with.  Even when we have lost the battle my patients and their families have not seen that, they have seen what we have done for them rather than what hasn't.  They take joy in their blessings even when they are being dealt a harsh blow.  That is a lesson that I hope I will carry with me for the rest of my life.