The "Why?" of the surgeries we do...

One of my friends pointed out that I have mentioned doing facial surgeries and plastic surgery without giving the reason "why?" the patients need these surgeries.

In short, the patients we are treating have a wide variety of problems. Many were born with a cleft lip or palate or both. (Generally, a large hole that connects the nose and mouth cavities.) Some of these patients are children while others have had these problems their whole lives and are now coming to be fixed at age 65yr and above. Others have large infections that have eaten away part of their mouth or cheek. Others have infections that have caused large tumors on their face, their jaw, or neck. Still others have glands (such as those hidden in the floor of your mouth) that have become very enlarged and form large, visible masses on their necks. Some have large round goiters in the middle of their necks caused by not having enough iodine in their diet. (In the US, our iodine comes in the form of iodized salt.) They also do surgery to release "locked jaw". Generally started by an infection, the jaw locks closed and slid back so that the tendons are at their shortest lengths then freeze there. After surgery, they have exercises that they will have to do for several months in order to keep the mobility as it heals.

For many of our jaw patients, part of their jaw, teeth and all, is removed and a titanium plate is put in in it's place. After several months of the plate, they come back for surgery where a part of the illiac crest (part of the hard bone ridge felt on your hip) is removed and then fastened to part of the plate in their chin. The bone will then grow and spread over the plate within the next year, creating a new jaw. They will probably need false teeth, but it is a very remarkable surgery! There are a variety of ways that cleft lips and palates are corrected so I won't try to explain those. However, most are painful and often need 2-3 surgeries to complete.

Also, if the child is not gaining weight or is under weight, (usually cleft lip/palate) they will not have the strength or ability to heal from surgery and are thus placed in our Baby Feeding program, where we design a specific nutritional regimen to fatten them up. We have 1-3 of these babies most of the time. It is also important that their mothers learn about correct nutrition, that their babies need to eat every three hours in order to gain weight, and sometimes new feeding techniques due to the child's deformity. Most are very loving mothers who feel helpless because their child is dying and they have no idea what to do to try to help him. One young mother, has been very discouraged because, no matter what we try, her daughter is not gaining any significant weight but is otherwise healthy. All of these cases are very emotional and very personally disturbing surgeries. They often wonder what they will look like after their surgiers? (Men seem to be the more vain and concerned about their faces here than the women!) Will they be able to eat better? What will people say about them now that that problem is no longer there or is much, much less? Will their babies live? Will they be able to get the surgeries they need? Many things to adress with these patients and a lot of teaching to do.

Many of the plastics patients have been severely burned. As the burn heals, the skin tightens and draws the joint closed (such as an elbow or fingers, knees or toes, or even armpits) and slowly curls up the joint then freezes it there. These are called burn contractures and must be released surgically with skin grafts covering the newly opened area. A graft patient then also has a section on their abdomen or thighs where skin was taken for the graft, called the donor site. Other people need plastic surgery for keloids (overactive scar tissue that forms huge ridges and lumps wherever they are). Still others have birth defects such as an extra finger on their hands or a part of an extra finger on one of their other fingers that needs to be removed. One little girl of 3 yr had one finger that had grown to adult size while the rest of her hand was the size of a normal 3 yr old hand and fingers.

Then there are patients that come with inguinal hernias (masses felt in the front thigh/groin area. When I asked one of the doctors about all of the children with hernias, he said that for most of them, they are born with it--part of the abdomenal floor doesn't close as it should as the child grows and develops, then the small bowel can get caught in that open pouch. For adults with hernias, many come from their heavy lifting and manual labor but are the same sort of things.

Most of the eye patients are coming to have cataracts removed. A small slit is made in the side of the eye and a suction catheter sucks out the mass clouding the eye. They then wear an eye patch for the next several days and have drops and so on to medicate it with. However, eye tissues heal very quickly and therefore, they do not stay in the hospital. They just come back later to have the patch removed and the eye checked. Other eye patients have an infection of the eye or extensive damage and all or part of the eye needs to be removed. These patients often stay in the hospital and have special eye care for several days before being sent home. When the tissue in the eye is healed, they are fitted with a prosthetic eye and given a new pair of sunglasses. I just saw some pictures of one eye patient before his prosthetic eye, looking a little uncertain as his eye didn't look like he hoped it would after surgery. Then with the prosthetic in and a face-splitting smile on! The next was of him wearing his new "shades" and an even bigger smile, if possible!

We do have an off-ship ministry called Burkett's Kids which works in conjuction with a local hospital to provide the chemotherapy needed to treat these fast-growing cancers. They need one treatment a month until the tumor has completely disappeared plus two more to put it totally into remission. It rarely comes back if they have had the full treatment. Because it grows so fast, the chemo affects its reproduction quickly and you see every day visible changes as it disappears!

One other ministry is Palliative Care, which is two girls who visit the dying patients that we can do nothing for. These are always very sad cases and it's such hard news to give--that we can't do anything for them! The palliative nurses make regular visits, doing wound care as needed, visiting with the family and patient, and just giving moral, emotional, and spiritual support to them. It is a very difficult job but whenever you ask them about it, they will agree but then quickly add that they are so blessed to know these patients and to be used by God to support them!

The last healthcare ministry we have is the dental team. They travel to villages and refugee camps to treat whatever they can. Normally this means simply pulling teeth. One dental surgeon told me that pulling teeth takes a lot of work and he wishes that he didn't have to--that they would still have teeth good enough to just fill!

Our other ministries seek to support the country's healthcare system by teaching them to grow better gardens, educating more medical technichians for the hospitals, having national surgeons and nurses come to observe surgeries that they have equipment to do (cataracts, hernias, etc) and ones that we hope, with education, they will be ready to do in the near future. The Hevie' Agricultural Training Center was part of one of those projects. The idea is to help improve the healthcare they have so that they can take over doing many of the surgeries we do, for themselves.

These are the ministries of Mercy Ship and why we do the surgeries we do. I was listening to the healthcare administrator discuss how he is already looking at what surgeries these countries may be able to do in the next ten years, so that we can be preparing to do more complicated surgeries in the nearer future as they take over the ones we are currently doing. That way, we are ever building them up, making them more proficient in the medical field, until they don't need us anymore! Already, one of our long term crew working in Benin, stated that "Benin has woken up in the last four years!" They have grown sooooo much since the ship was here last, that we are confident that they will soon be picking up some of the surgeries we are currently doing! And in all of these, there's the "why?" of why we are here? Why are we doing this? The African culture doesn't understand the concept of volunteer so they are always asking, Why are you here working when you're not getting any money for it? The answer? Because "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever would believe in Him, should not die but have eternal life." (John 3:16) God loves Africa. He cries at their suffering and wants them to know that He cares and has come to save them from more than their physical sickness--He came to heal their souls! Who needs money when you can be a part of that?!?!