Responding to my Nursing Friends!

One of our patients wives, during his 4 day stay, she stripped
beds after patients left before our staff could get to them.
Then fold linens and scrape meal plates. Contagious smile

Pediatric patient on the ship receiving treatment

Clinically, what stood out to me in Vietnam? That seems to be what all  my nursing friends are inquiring about, well the necessity for dermatology was astounding. Many of the stories shared by the patients seeking care aboard the USNS Mercy were horrific testimonies of hate crimes,  jealousy feuds, and abuse. The ship's dermatologist was in high demand providing laser scar revision and contracture release treatment to burn victims. In the post-operative role, I took care of a very brave 3-year-old  girl who had been burned in a house fire in an intentional fit of rage. 85% of her body surface suffered 3rd degree burns and although she miraculously survived this horrific event only 4 months prior to boarding the Mercy, her road to recovery and self worth will be a long one. The dermatologist was able to release some of the contractures behind her knees, around her ankles, hands, and buttocks which enables her to stand with straighter posture and grip a fork that will provide her the freedom to feed herself.  The  procedure essentially put microscopic holes in the skin through the scars of the dermis and epidermis giving the skin a second chance to  heal and stretch. It looks like you are aerating your lawn obviously  with a more delicate tactic!

This is the cosumi the Japanese ship that partnered with
PP12 this is the fair well sail as they passed us on our port side

Burns were second to motor vehicle accidents for mortality in children in Vietnam. Many children have  accidental burns from the cultural way of cooking on low stone stoves with open flame, scalding water boiling on the stove, or the cooking
grease. As mentioned before some were intentional acid burns, kerosene burns, and diesel house fires. When I was at the children’s hospital it was very eye-opening to see how well the children were healing on the burn ward, even when resources were scarce and caregivers and  nurses were spread thin. I applaud the Pediatric Hospital in Vin for their level of care and competency. We worked alongside very skilled nurses and surgeons.

A great keepsake!

I played my best game of charades today. I managed to request a skirt be fashioned  to fit me! It is a simple skirt elastic waste band and stretchy material, but  it brought so much joy and laughter to the market place. I could probably bet you that the seamstress has never made a skirt my size. We just had to laugh along side them. I wore it out of the market and did a few spins for everyone and they cheered. My friend Aubrey decided to have one made too after she saw mine. We let the ladies pick the print on our skirts. The bus was pulling away from the curb as we ran to catch it in our new skirts. Probably another sight to be seen! I also bought a hammock!

Vietnam

  “Back in ‘Nam” has been the slogan around here and most everyone on the ship has taken a chance to talk to their grandparents about being in the war and what their experience was like. Lately, the ICU has been slow with only a few patients each day. Today we are at zero patients, and although it is not a bad thing to be patient-less, however we still need to staff the unit in case of an emergency. Therefore our unit decided to play a game of physical fitness challenges including 100 pushups, 100 sit ups, and 30 pull ups a day, which usually we complete one set of 10 reps every hour or so until finished. I still have two more sets to go today but I am NOT doing the pull-ups as that is just way too comical  to observe!

Yesterday was a day of Liberty on shore in Vinh, Nghe An, Vietnam, the first country in which we have been provided liberty while in a working port.  I had a great, super sweaty, but oh-so-much-fun day! The groups of people with liberty were quite random because the staff are assigned liberty days by department, thus I ended up in a group of 5 guys. We took the bus from the ship for an hour until its last drop off location which happened to be a mall, but we had an inside source and knew there was an open-air market nearby. It was nice being with a bunch of guys, because they were all gung-ho about exploring the town, yet we certainly stood out in the crowd. Imagine in a sea of golden brown skin and beautiful black hair are five tall white men and a blonde white girl with a butt! 

Yes, even my butt stood out, the women would just walk up and pat my butt as I walked the market. My crew of guys started getting protective but overall we just had to laugh it off.  In the city no one spoke English and limited communication with the locals other than exchanging greetings!  Often you heard “Hello giggle giggle giggle”. At the market locals were found sewing on soles of shoes, adding branding logos to shoes and shirts, as well as full on tailoring of dresses and suits!

The highlight and joke of the day stemmed from walking past the neighborhood pharmacy. Its counters were filled with drugs of every kind on display, in fact Viagra was right on top of the counter next to the pain medication. Our crew had a field day discussing the access and sheer availability of Viagra! Later we walked out of the market and all of a sudden saw a grown man just bathing in the water fountain, as if it was very normal and he bathed there daily! From the market we walked about 3-4 miles to Ho Chi Min Park where a large statue and flags were on display along with some pretty green grass, where we took a break from the sun since it was incredibly hot. According to our map, we thought the Park was much closer – luckily there were some great shops along the way and we purchased every cold water bottle (because its about 107 degrees out)  we could get our hands on. I bought a pin wheel in remembrance of my Guam roommates and our adventures, throughout the day I took pictures like the pig in the Geico commercial all over Vinh City.

Our local cook of the rice crepe

One of the guys, Chris and I decided to be adventurous and tried some local grub, in reality we had no clue what this lady was cooking, but it looked like she poured a white rice paste over a cheese cloth and steamed it. Once she removed the cheese cloth from the steam bath, the rice paste came out looking like a thin crape or even transparent paper.  Seating was a bit odd, Chris and I sat in these child sized chairs and ate the local food with chopsticks. The cooks brought out a fish sauce or dip and then some chopped chili and lime, I started to squeeze the lime over the ‘rice crape’ and the locals started to laugh and pointed at the fish sauce. Thus, in goes the chili and lime into the fish sauce and Chris and I ventured at our first ever ‘BANH MUOT NONG.’ I asked a translator on the ship today and she said it translates into hot rice cake. My sister did a quick Google translation and she got ‘hot smooth ball’… hmmmmm…  Well it did not taste like much, but the experience was fun.

After our food incident, the rest of our group was waiting and looking for the liberty bus, yet it never passed by, so we waved down a cab to get back to the beach which became an interesting endeavor, as we did not know the name of the beach. Similar to our experience in the city, our taxi driver did not speak an ounce of English, I showed him a picture that I had taken along the way and he was like ‘oh oh oh oh’ and nodded his head as if he knew which beach we were aiming for and ushered us into his cab. Impressively, our gang made it back to the right beach which happened to be 30 minutes away! By the time we arrived, it was dark outside and there was a techno show of lights all around. Such a spectacular site, everything around us was lit up: the statues had lights, locals were selling glow sticks and fun glowing toys, and each of the golf carts/mopeds were all decked out in lights that flashed to the techno music! 

Dinner was our next adventure and it became a game of charades. The guys and I would point at a picture on the menu and pray that something edible would arrive! I ended up with the best plate of food out of the group, it was ramen like noodles with beef on top. Ultimately, the server arrived and everyone at the table just pointed to my plate and pushed their plates away.  Overall, my Liberty day was so refreshing and the laughter was never ending!

Also - here's a link to to the Pacific Partnership's latest blog

Philippines and Subic Bay

 Hello friends and family! Yes I know, I am long overdue for a blog post... and I think more frequent and shorter posts might be your preference, but I have procrastinated and thus the need for a longer post about the past three weeks while in the Philippines.

To be honest, these last twenty-two days have been hard; physically, mentally, and spiritually. I knew when I signed up that this mission would be difficult, but I was really envisioning rainbows, flowers, and great moments of healing. 

While on Vacation at Subic Bay

Since joining the USNS Mercy on May 1^st, there have truly been some phenomenal surgeries accomplished on the ship and tremendous testimonies of healing. While serving as a nurse, I have seen vision restored, massive tumors removed, limbs straightened and people being give a second chance to walk again. In the Philippines the most challenging aspect for me was the sheer amount of hours we put in on the floor. Every person on our team worked 14 days straight in nothing less than 12 hour shifts. After these gruelingly long days serving the people of the Philippines Islands, I had little motivation work out at the gym and relax. Something wonderful I have had to look forward to was the special times set aside for our woman's bible study and prayer group started back in Indonesia. It is such a blessing to have these women come together and lift each other up in prayer.

The patients during this rotation in the Philippines were much more critical than those we helped in Indonesia. There was also more time to conduct surgeries and post-operations care in the hospital since the ship stayed anchored in place. Something really exciting was I took care of my first ventilated (life support) patient. I originally requested to support one of the nurses in taking care of this patient, but he then offered to let me receive the patient directly out of surgery and recover them. It was a great teaching moment and I really appreciated that the nurse gave me the opportunity and supported me through the experience.

  

Sleeping Quarters on the ship
for patients and their escort

We also had large amount of children surgical cases, in fact on one of the fourteen days, our floor had to set up more beds in the ICU and every patient we saw that day was under 20 years old, our floor essentially became a pediatric ICU!  One young boy had a pretty extensive abdominal surgery and it was quite rough for this little guy. He ended up having a 10-day stay in the Intensive Care Unit with close monitoring.  In the end he recovered very well and I was responsible for taking care of him for 8 of of those 10 days. He was a challenge primarily because he cried a lot... he was a young boy and his pain was sever, but when I touched his pinky toe, he cried. It was then that I knew it was not physical pain, rather out of fear and emotional pain. Nevertheless, we became buddies and although we couldn’t understand each other, we made the most of it and the language barrier almost didn’t matter. The words "nooo Nurse Kelly, nooo" almost became endearing :) While taking care of him, I had him walk every other hour and that’s when the tears and whining came... He would be walking completely unassisted and once he realized it, he would start crying for me. 

Finally we had a little chat (via the interpreter) about realistic expectations because this little man may have looked like he was about 6 years old, yet he really was 11. Eventually he asked me, "Why don't you pity me? I am not a strong man!" That broke my heart, it was then that I realized it may not be about the pain of walking post- surgery, but the tears came from him being teased so much as a kid that he was more so emotionally broken. This kid definitely had a cheering team in the ICU and around the ship as we walked everywhere!

Patients and Escorts arriving from the Islands

While treating him, we walked to all of his radiology tests, to the pharmacy when I needed to pick-up meds, and then finally on one of the last days we walked outside and saw the helicopters and jelly fish! His mom was so sweet too - she spoke broken English, but over the 10 days she too gained confidence and sometimes filled in as an interpreter when ours were off the unit. The whole ship took an interest in this little man! The optometry unit came and fitted him for glasses and you could tell he loved them because he stopped squinting. Later in the week I called the dental unit to see if they had any open appointments for escorts to be treated and unfortunately they said they were full. I went to my women’s prayer that night and mentioned it to them and one of the women, Georgie, a dentist from the Australian Air Force and my roommate was like.."I'm off tomorrow and I'm a dentist I'll just tell a hygienist to set up a room for me! Bring the little boy’s mom in at 8:00am" this happened one hour before they were leaving the ship! It was really nice to see all the departments come together and support this family especially after a very long post operative stay.

Taking care of our little patient!

The boy’s mom also asked me if I had a recorder on my phone, she had written a song this week and wanted to sing it for me. It was beautiful! We borrowed a guitar from the ship’s chapel and she played the song again and looked so in her element. The public affairs staff was walking through the ICU and heard the music and asked if they could set up a recording space and record her song. Public Affairs is going to use it as the music behind THIS slideshow! She also got a copy of her songs. It was so beautiful to see how God worked through our various teams to bless this family and in turn how much they taught us and showed us perseverance in the face of trials.

Yes that's a glass of wine while
on Liberty in Subic Bay

The hardest part of the time in the Philippines for me was that I did not have one day off the ship. I returned from my Indonesian MedCAP on June 8th and did not set foot on soil until we pulled into Subic Bay for liberty on July 2^nd and believe me, I was getting a little stir crazy. :) Thus when we received four days off the ship at Subic Bay, I was super excited! Liberty was fun and it was super nice to get off the ship, and it has prepared me for the next destination, I am ready to sail to Vietnam!!! We will be there in 2 days and I have promised my sister, Kim that I will try to get better at posting small tid bits and blogs! Well hopefully you made it through my long blog and I hope that my stories can inspire and bless others so please feel free to share my blog with others in your lives!