GUAM

Check out this article on the Navy's website where I'm quoted as the volunteer Intensive Care nurse for Project Hope!

Things are going to start getting crazier! We just left Guam and are sooo close to our first mission location. The logistics and operations of Indonesia are interesting. The ship is going to continually be on the move. It will drop teams off at different medical, surgical, dental, vision, and veterinarian sites starting on the main northern tip of Indonesia and then continuing on towards the small islands. I agreed to camp and sleep with mosquito nets and limited showers, which opened up a spot for a 6 day MEDCAP. Medical Civic Action Program where medical screenings and interventions will occur. I will have an amazing nurse and corpsman team with me. Mom the guys have cumulatively served 87 months in Afghanistan and said they’ll watch out for me! So bring on the baby wipe baths and humidity!

I am finally not the sole Project Hope team member aboard the Mercy! I have about 15 other teammates with a wide variety of experiences. We have Doctors, nurses, and Midwifes along with a few pharmacy students! It’s nice to see someone in the same uniform as me.

So what’s been going on…

Like before LOTS of set up and planning. I never did appreciate the guys that would restock our supply room, but I will forever be grateful for their work! The ICU team grew from 6 to 25! While in Guam, but the original 6 had to find all our supplies and equipment on this HUGE ship and then make a supply room from scratch! Who knew that would be sooo difficult?!? I am glad that’s done. Tomorrow night they are planning on having a movie on the flight deck. They’ll project it on to the Helicopter Hanger and hopefully it won’t rain! From the 22-25^th we were in Guam and I had liberty issued. We had a great time! My liberty buddies were amazing and had the same mindset… let’s see and do as much as we can and sleep when we get back on the ship! So I would say we slept 12 hours in three nights out! Shore Patrol, the duty officers assigned to make sure everyone was back in their hotel rooms at night usually found us around town at 1am and drove us back to our hotel! We went on two tours. One was a river boatadventure and we cruised up a river and saw all the local habitat and culture. They made awesome baskets, fans, fish, flowers out of palm leaf and we got to take it home. We tried fruit right off the trees and the mango was delicious! 

The other tour we took was a dolphin watching adventure! We arrived and we were the only ones picked up at the hotel for this tour! So the four of us went on a private tour on the south tip of Guam. We followed the dolphins and then they took us to a cove and anchored. We got out and snorkeled!!! The staff threw in fish food and all the fish started coming up from the coral and surrounded us while we swam! That was a site to be seen. We played at the beach, pool hopped as we saw shipmates at different hotels on the beach! 

I was invited to a Chamber of Commerce meeting/reception with the Captain of the nursing department. The Commodore was there and the other department heads!  The girls I spent my time with (my liberty buddies) were Helle my Danish vet friend, Kaelin my roommate a biochemist, and Arlinda my other roommate and nurse. 

Kaelin and I have decided we are going to start and informal bible study and start digging into the Word. Kaelin has been a real blessing and encourager on this mission. I think we both build each other up and it has been a mutually beneficial friendship.  

Keep all my shipmates in your prayers. I may make it out to sound like a ton of fun and there are fun times, but most of the day is hard work and it’s a new working environment for everyone. It’s like starting a new hospital with new staff and making up the rules and regulations as you go! I am thankful for all the patience you all have had waiting on me to update this blog. Like I always say… internet is sooo slow, sometimes it’s just not worth the time to come down to the internet room and get on. Your e-mail can take 5 minutes to load, 2 minutes while you wait for your response page to open, and then another 5 minutes to send!!!