Special BLOOD Edition

Blood Donation…
Alonso was accessively bleeding during surgery for removal of tumors on his back strongly connected to his blood vessels. He urgently needed blood both during the surgery, after and then during a second surgery to remove the remaining tumors. One of my privileges to serve on the M/V Africa Mercy ship was the opportunity to provide the needed blood for Alonso’s blood type. Immediately after I donated, he received my blood while he was recouperating between surgeries. During his entire stay on the ship for surgeries, he received donations from eight different crew members. With Alonso’s two languages of French and Fon, but no English, I asked him through a translator what he thought of having white-woman’s blood in his veins, and he laughed and said it was good! Alonso was discharged from the hospital after his two successful surgeries and is back to work as a zemijohn (motorcycle taxi) driver providing for his wife, 6 year old son and 4 year old daughter.

Observing Surgeries…
Seeing first hand the skilled hands of surgeons, more akin to artists, is one of the privileges of being on this ship. I was able to observe two goiter removal surgeries a few days ago.
The first was on the neck of a slender, 25 year old woman same age range as my kids, from a remote village in Benin. With amazing precision, one of the two surgeons cut and simultaneously cauterized the dark skin revealing a thin layer of fat, then muscles and veins. I was surprised how little bleeding took place. I was standing on a stool only about three feet away from the incision. The other doctor explained what he was doing and showed me scars on her neck where she had no doubt been treated for her tumor by the local herbalists. During the surgery, not use to such sights, I felt hot and sweaty then light headed and had to sit down off and on to regain my equilibrium. My perspective changed seeing her exposed muscles like a piece of roast beef when suddenly I could see her heart beat pulse in her neck. The tumor was uncovered, clamping veins around the mass and gently, carefully clipped free of its grip on her neck. A mandarin orange size tumor was removed along with one of her thyroid glands that had been enveloped by the growing tumor. As she was layer by layer closed up, with thorough stitches, the surgeon explained well beyond my comprehension the nature of tumors and protein chains with faulty links in the 26 or so processes. The tumors grow substantially more here, he said, as the local diet of casaba, greens, yams, etc., feed the fault.
The second operation was performed on a mid-40s woman with her tumor directly in the middle of her throat. By this time my queasy feelings were gone. Quickly and skillfully, a tumor the size of a naval orange was removed.
Between the two surgeries, I viewed cataract removals in a different operating room. The Mercy Ships physician worked amazingly quick and painlessly on his steady stream of patients. Free services on the ship are provided to so many people that would have little to no means of such a surgery from their own resources. The free gift of God brings to mind the verse in Isaiah 55:1:
"Come, all you who are thirsty,

come to the waters;

and you who have no money,

come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

without money and without cost."