Suzanne's Mission Adventures

So I'm hesitant to write this blog, but it's mainly because of my own stupidity/thoughtlessness.  But God is bigger than my embarrassment so I have to share it. So today I went to the Island of Roum again.  This island is about a 40 minute boat ride away from the port of Guinea.  Now by "boat" I really mean a large canoe with a motor attached.  This island isn't that big, it takes (depending on where you are on the island) 5 minutes to walk across it.  If you decided to climb up the "mountain" it would take longer. Roum is the middle and small one So the day was going great.  A little hotter than when we went before, but me being me, didn't really think much of it.  It was probably in the upper 80's close to 90.  Really about the hottest day I have had here yet.  But see my problem was, I wasn't drinking that much.  I didn't think about it.  But then one of the girls I went with wanted to go exploring on some rocks to see ...

So before discharge of all patients get a picture taken that they can take home.  Doesn't matter what type of surgery they had done, every single person has a picture taken.  This picture happens to be my very first day on the ward.  My patient is the one on the left.

If you aren't needed to work on the wards you might be put into special projects.  Special projects can be multiple different things, the most popular is scanning documents but right now they are also needing people to help with organizing OR trays. So I was supposed to work day shift today, but since there were only 7 patients on my ward, last night they pulled me from staffing and I got the notice that I was changed to special projects.   So instead of having to get up at 6:30 this morning I woke up at 7:15 for a meeting at 7:45.  But didn't end up going because my stomach was very very iffy.  So at 9 when I went to my supervisors office to see what the special project was that I was supposed to be doing, I told her what was going on.  She of course sent me back to my room with the charge to get better.   Tomorrow I am also on special projects with the hope I feel better in the morning (at 10 am instead of 7 am...so much better).  Isn't G...

So I am having a terrible time sitting down and actually writing out a blog post.  There is so much that I want to tell you all, but I just don't know how to put it all in one post.  So I figured I would do something a little different.  I figured I would would do fun facts: Ship fun facts, Hospital fun facts, and what ever other fun facts I can come up with.  Hopefully I can get more of these out if I keep them short.  :) So ship fun fact #1 The ship has something called 2 minute showers.  Which means, you are only supposed to use 2 minutes of running water during your shower.  So you get wet, shut water off, suds up/shampoo, turn water back on, rinse off, turn water off, use conditioner/shave, turn water back on and rinse off.  So no taking nice long hot or cold showers.  The water is on off on off on off. Well on Friday we were put on water restrictions due to an unknown issue with the water supply.  We got this email. De...

Man it's crazy to write that sentence...I finally arrived!  Not only that but I finally arrived to Mercy Ships!  A dream I have had for over 20 years.  I still don't think it has set in that I am here!  But soon I'm sure.  My travel here definitely wasn't without it's hiccups.  My flight out of Cleveland left 30 minutes (I believe) late.  But that was ok since I had a 3 hour layover in Detroit.  Luckily I didn't have any hiccups in Detroit.  But the flight over to Paris was long.  I left the States at 6 pm and I arrived at 7 am their time.  Which meant it was 2 am home time.  Of course that meant I wasn't ready to go to sleep until they turned the cabin lights back on and fed us breakfast.  :)  So far my travel wasn't that bad.  Then things decided to get a little interesting.  Our plane was late taking off for a couple of reasons.  One - luggage was added to our plane that needed to be removed....