Where do I start to tell you about my week? A week full of anticipation, excitement, hope, happiness. But also a week with sadness, desperation and anger. Yes it has been a week full of emotion that I don't know where to start or process it.
Why so much emotion, well I am helping out at the screening centre. Instead of having one big screening day, this time we have a centre, which will be open Monday to Friday for a month. My job is to screen patients to see if they are candidates for surgery. Fortunately most of the time I get to give them hope, by saying yes we might be able to help you, and then give them the card with their name with an appointment to see the surgeon! You see their faces light up, then the smile comes and the thank you's. That's my favourite part of my job to say yes we can help!
I see them crossing the room towards me and if they have a tumour or a cleft lip (problems that are visible) my heart jumps and I get excited, as I know we can give them hope. I start taking their history and their details through a translator. Sometimes the history is hard to listen to, they have been through so much, but they are survivors and it's so good to give them the card to come to the ship!
Unfortunately we cannot help everyone. And those are the hardest, they have a sadness in their eyes when you look at them. When they have this longing to give them their last hope, and you take that away from them. It breaks my heart to say no to them. The comfort I take is that we can pray with them, we also have a wonderful prayer team that can help them find some peace and healing.
I feel privileged to have been asked to help with the screening team. I get to meet the patients that are going to be on the wards soon. Actually tomorrow, our first patients will start walking up the gangway to the hospital! We are starting with orthopaedics, can't wait to see the children all walking with their casts on!
It starts all over again tomorrow, hoping and praying the right people come along. That we will be able to give them a card with an appointment.
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