Ward Nursing!

I haven't written about my patients yet because, honestly, I'm just not sure where to start.
First of all, the patients here are among the most beautiful, joyful people I have ever had the pleasure to meet in my life.  I find it incredibly easy to love them.
Being on the plastics ward has been a huge blessing. We have such joy on the ward. Everyone quickly becomes such a little family. The sense of interconnectedness is really powerful.  All the patients and their caregivers help each other. If one needs help to the bathroom, another will quickly run to help.  Other caregivers will rub the back of another patient without question. They share their food, often offering to us nurses to come sit with them and eat. This is just how it works here, and I feel that we could learn so much from them.

Let me just start from the beginning and explain how things generally work here...
The wards are set up as large rooms divided into two sides, each with 10 beds per side (it's slightly different in D ward with maxillo-facial patients, one side has 10 beds, the other 5 beds, and then ICU off of that has 3 beds and 2 isolation room beds).  The beds can be put on risers to allow for space underneath to put a mat down where a caregiver for the patient can sleep.  For pediatric patients, they all must have a caregiver present. This could be a parent, an aunt or uncle, a sibling, a grandparent, etc... Also, caregivers may be children of the patients or younger siblings that come with the parents. This is the reason we had extra little babies and toddlers running around making our shifts more exciting, crazy, and joyful.  Now that I've been here for a couple of months, I find it hard to think of going back to the states where each patient has their own private room. It seems so sad.  There is always music, dancing, worship, games, etc in the wards and my heart is just smiling all the time.  I have learned how to be a pediatric nurse at times, how to care for patients post-op from surgeries I have never seen before, learned to break communication barriers with a sticker, a smile, or a hug.  I feel such a sense of family and feel so much love for my patients and their caregivers, and feel that love radiating back at me. I get daily hugs, arm rubs, butt pats, and cheek kisses.

One of my pediatric patients was a challenge when I first had her on night shifts.  She was very reserved, always looking at us nurses as if she were very unsure about us, sizing us up. She was vomiting for 2-3 days post-op and having diarrhea, and to top it off she was on bed rest. She hated the medicine and wasn't eating well either.  Having white people care for her probably didn't help much at first.  Her stomach issues cleared up on their own and after her first dressing changes she was able to be out of bed.  She was extremely hesitant to start walking on her bandaged feet, mostly out of fear of pain.  She would sit on the floor and her mother would walk away and the other patients would tease her, then she would reach for me to pick her up and carry her to the bathroom or the bed... We kept encouraging her and once she realized it didn't hurt and was nice to have some independence, we couldn't get her to stop walking back and forth around the ward.  Soon, her personality emerged and she was far from the shy little girl in bed in the corner.  She walks around to all the different beds, talking to all the other patients and caregivers, trying to learn English and yelling out any phrase she learns on repeat.  "How are you? Fine. Thank you, you're welcome!"  Every time she sees me in the hall, she yells my name, runs to me with open arms, and jumps into my outstretched embrace. Talk about a welcome! I am so blessed!

 

This is just one patient of SO many that I am so overjoyed to have met.  The plastic surgery patients can end up staying with us for a very long time.  Some of them get infections at their wound site which really delays healing time, some just need dressing changes for a long time until they heal well enough to be let off the ship into a very minimally clean environment, some have other complications that keep them with us for a little longer.  Either way, we get very close to them and they also become very close to each other on the wards.  The other day I was looking through photos with them and they would all call out each patients' names when they saw them and laugh, including old patients from a month ago that had since been discharged.  I loved it.  This place is just so full of joy and you can feel the love all around.  God is here and is doing great things and I feel so happy to be a part of it!