Hospital fun fact #6

So I showed the video of what the wards look like.  But I didn't tell you about the beds.  The patient beds are all the same.  Medal frame with a thinner mattress on it.  So all patients under 18 yrs old get a caregiver.  The caregivers can be the mom, dad, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, or friend.  Some of these caregivers are giving up months of their lives to come care for the patient.  If a patient is from up country they are traveling 24 to 48 hrs to get to the ship.  Then they usually stay with family or at the hope center before the surgery.  Then depending on what type of surgery they had, they can spend up to a month or more on the wards.  Then they go back to either the hope center or the families they are staying with in Conakry.  After they are discharged from the ship, the patients have to be discharged from out patients.  And again some of the patients have up to 2 months with out patients.  All the while the caregivers are still with any pediatric patients.

So this post ended up being different than what I was planning on it being.  But that's what happens after working 3 night shifts and you have been up for 17 hrs.

So back to what I was originally going to say.  I am attaching a picture of one of the wards.  What the amazing this is, is that the patients get to sleep on the beds and the caregivers have to sleep under the beds on mattresses.  So not only do the caregivers give up days to months of their lives they have to sleep on a mattress on the ground.