Casting: a tale of walking in our patients shoes (or casts as the case may be)

I was never told in any of my elementary education classes in college that the day might come when my sweet and sassy kindergarteners would get to SAW my cast off…but this week, that day arrived! I probably wasn’t prepared for that scenario because in no other school can I ever imagine a situation where that would happen, but if you hadn’t noticed, I do not teach in an ordinary school!

Every year before the orthopedic surgeries start on our patients with bowed and windswept legs, the kindergartners and I traipse down the gangway and down to the dock where we enter the rehab tent. We get to be a part of the training for the orthopedic surgeries, which involves teaching the rehab team and day crew how to put casts on patients. We get to help out with this because kindergartners have small legs, so practicing on them doesn’t take up too much of our plaster supply, and also because a lot of the patients the rehab team will be casting will be about the size of my kindergartners. Every year I ask if I too can get a cast, and every year I am told that I cannot because my legs are too big and they can’t waste the plaster (only thing my legs have EVER been too big for!). Am I the only one who always wanted to have a cast, but never wanted to actually get hurt to do it? Well this time by dream came true!

Before going down to the rehab tent, we talked as a class about why some patients needs to have casts on their legs and what the rehab team does. I showed them pictures of patients with casts on and pictures of my previous students getting casts put on. 

I told them what a special opportunity this is that we get to be the class to go down and help the team learn how to cast. We get very amped up and excited! We enthusiastically walk down to the tent and everything is thrilling…until they bring out the saw, which they use to cut the casts off. It always gets very real in that moment. That’s when the rubber meets the road because that is the moment each student must decide for him or herself if he or she will actually go through with this plan.  Getting the cast put on is exciting, but they know that if a cast is put on, it must come off and there is no way around the saw. I have had students back out at this point, because that instrument makes a rather scary sound and it looks sharp. 

The rehab team is always so sweet and encouraging and they let us touch the blade as they explain that it won’t cut their skin and they explain that it just “tickles the cast off” (meaning it vibrates through the plaster).

This year, after showing the cast saw, they asked for a volunteer and one of my little guys immediately was in. He hopped up on the table while seventeen crew members gathered in a semi-circle around it and the lead orthopedic surgeon got to work explaining and demonstrating on my student. He held very still and was a great example! 

Meanwhile, my two girls found the big rehab balls and had a grand time rolling around the entrance of the tent. I wasn’t sure that my girls were actually going to go through with the casting. 

When the surgeon was done demonstrating on my first little guy, he told the crew members to group up to practice themselves and I asked which of my girls wanted to get on which table. They happily obliged and hopped up to have their own casts done. 

Once they were settled in and I had taken a sufficient number of photos (hundreds!), I got to get on my own table and have the process done to me! I gave my little guy my phone camera and he happily walked around taking pictures of all of us.

I was a bit concerned because as I was getting my cast put on, my girls were having theirs taken off. I am generally right there when they get the casts off in case they get scared and need a hand to hold, but I couldn’t be because I was stuck on my own table and in my own cast. I kept sending my sweet little guy to check on the girls and to ask if they were ok, and they were! What troopers! After they had all had their casts taken off, the rehab team leader asked them if they wanted to come cut off Miss Beth’s cast! Wait! What?!? I could see this going horribly wrong, but if course it didn’t and they were so thrilled to get to cut through the fiberglass and plaster (along with my friend Allan, the rehab team lead). They each got to take home their plaster cast at the end of the fieldtrip!

What a special opportunity this was for everyone involved! The rehab team got some little legs (and one larger one) to practice on, and we got to be one step closer to understanding what it’s like for our patients who wear those heavy casts, not for thirty minutes like we did, but for so much longer! Those kiddos are absolute champs for coming to a strange place, trusting complete strangers to repair their legs and lead them through months of rehab to teach them to walk again. In a setting where the patients can be a bit scary to us kindergartners because they speak a different language and wear hospital gowns and have dressings and tubes and wires, it’s oh so good to have one more experience in common that helps us walk in their shoes and brings us just a little closer together.

*I know I’ve said this before, but I’d just like to end with a BIG shout out to the fantastic crew members, like our rehab team, who make time for our littlest crew members and let them know they are just as valuable and just as much part of this crew as anyone! What a blessing!

Peace. Be still.

I woke up the other night to the voice of the Captain being pumped into all the cabins through the PA system at 12:30am. He was requesting for all deck crew to report to their stations in order to keep the ship safe and secure. It was only after that that I noticed how much the ship was moving. It felt like we were sailing again, except we weren’t. We were moored to the dock like normal, but there was still a lot of movement. And this movement didn’t feel like the rocking and swaying we feel during the sail, it felt like the ship was shuddering. Long, deep shudders ran down the ship every few seconds and I became aware of the flashes of lightening and rolls of thunder out my little window. Rain poured down the pane in never ending torrents…and I was scared. It’s the first and only time I ever sat up and prayed that my ship wouldn’t sink. I’ve never had cause to pray that on the Disney Magic or on the Africa Mercy until that night. Granted, this is me talking…a non-mariner who scares quite easily, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but it is how I felt, especially after hearing the quake in the Captain’s voice. I laid there in bed thinking about the patients down below and how scared they must be, and also about how scared the disciples must have felt when they were caught out in a storm on the sea of Galilee.

 I did eventually go to sleep and woke up to sunny skies, but a dock that looked quite chaotic. Benches were strewn around, the handwashing station tent was missing, the rehab tent has collapsed, and even part of our container wall had been knocked over. It looked pretty rough. In line for breakfast, the Captain told me that a ship docked near us had come untethered and was coming towards us during the night. Twice it came very close to hitting us and it did eventually run into another ship farther down the dock, but not us. We heard that in town trees had been ripped out of the ground and cars had been flung by the wind and storm. During kindergarten that morning, my littles and I went our to deck 7 and stretched our little hands out over the dock and all the people who were already starting the long clean up process, and prayed. We prayed by name for each person we saw down there cleaning. We prayed for the patients who had been so scared and had thought we were sailing away in the night. We prayed for the people in town who didn’t have a home to be in during the storm last night or whose home had been swept away. My littles even prayed for all the animals who were out in the storm. I wish everyone could have had the view I did, of five little five-year-olds stretching out their little hands through the bars on deck 7 to pray over everything they saw.

 The beginning of this field service has felt pretty scary and stormy for me. My heart and mind have felt weighed down with lots of things like attempting to help the new teachers stay afloat, trying to figure out where I fit in this constantly changing community as friends come and go and change, praying for big decisions about next year, missing my family, and lots more. Yesterday a new friend came up to me as we scooped food onto our plates in the dining room and asked how long I have been onboard. I told him and he said that I really seem to thrive here and that he always sees a smile on my face. That kind of threw me for a loop because I don’t feel like I’ve had nearly as many smiles over this first quarter, but I’m glad that apparently joy is still coming across. After that comment I looked up the word “thrive.” Siri said, “to grow or develop well or vigorously.” Yes. That certainly is happening here. I may not feel happy all the time and I may have lots on my mind, but I can with certainty see God growing me here. And that’s good.

 So, while there have been storms in this first part of the Senegal field service, both literally and figuratively, I want to do like my littles and stretch out my hand over all the questions and concerns and craziness and pray for all that I see. I’d appreciate it if you’d like to pray with me.
-Pray for some critical positions that need to be filled both in the Academy and ship wide (and if you know any computer, PE, or French teachers, please send them my way!)
-Pray for the community and friendships onboard as people come and go. Pray that the community onboard would come together and that no one would feel alone. I think this is one of Satan’s biggest weapons here.
-Pray for the surgeries going on every day and also for those we cannot help.
-Pray for unity and love and wisdom for each of us and for this whole organization, especially as we soon expand to two ships.

When Jesus spoke to the storm he said, “Peace! Be still!” That’s what I want in my heart and mind, in my classroom, in the hospital, and in every department onboard. Peace. Be still.

At Home in Senegal!

We’ve been in Senegal for almost a month now! The sail to Senegal was relatively calm, but I definitely didn’t feel great on the sail days. No kids or teachers were throwing up from seasickness though, so we’ll call that a success! We had several themed evenings during the sail, which are always great fun! We had a pirate and mocktails party, a sock golf tournament, and a movie night in midships (watching Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is a 4D experience while sailing)! 

Our captain worshipping on the bow!

We got to visit the Bridge and check out the charts and maps the ship was following. 

We had school the morning of our arrival so we went to school as normal and waited for the captain to announce “all deck hands to your mooring stations” and then we knew it was time to head out to deck 7! We were getting close! We grabbed our crayon colored flags we had made earlier in the week and headed out for our first glimpse of Senegal! 

We passed multiple beautiful islands on our way in and as we neared our new dock space we could see the advance team waving from the dock in their matching African fabric for this special occasion. We waved our flags and sang “Jabulani Africa.” Sailing into a new country is always such a sweet and special experience! 

We finally got the ship tied up (and by we, I don’t mean to insinuate that my littles and I had anything to do with it) and we went back to class. That evening we had the welcome ceremony, which we got dressed up for and went out to the deck 7 to watch the ceremony taking place below. There were fingers, dancers, a red carpet, and lots of speeches! The First Lady of Senegal was there and welcomed us! It was as very joyful occasion! 

Over the course of this past month, I’ve had the chance to go out to Goree Island, which is one of the main locations that slaves were shipped out of West Africa. You can still tour the slave house where they were kept and the door of no return where they boarded the boats, never to return to Africa. It was a very sobering place, but physically so beautiful! It’s a small island so there are no roads for vehicles! You just walk everywhere and all the doors and flowers are so colorful! 

We have also had the Academy and Hospital Open Houses! Those are the two places onboard where general crew are not allowed to go, so we have big open houses for the crew at the beginning if the field service so the crew can all come through and see what happens in those spaces on the ship! During the hospital open house I got to learn how to empty a catheter, do cataract surgery (on an apple) and take a ride through the CT machine! And the hospital opens tomorrow!!! 

Whole crew!

*Tonight felt like a holy moment to be onboard. We all got to go down to the hospital and pray for every room...I even saw people praying over each bed! There were prayers that were quietly whispered, prayers that were shouted, prayers in many languages at the same time, prayers in song, and everything in between! It was a special moment to be a part of this crew, this family, walking the halls of the hospital seeing people laying hands on doors, praying over specific nurses and friends, and even praying over the stools where the patients will first sit when they get onboard TOMORROW! Pray with us! Pray for courage for these brave people who may have never been on a ship before or even in a hospital before. Pray for physical healing for each of our patients. Pray for spiritual healing and that they will meet Jesus through this family of crew members!