Work experience

Usually school and work are separate things.  Children and teens of crew members attend school here on the ship.  There is an academy with grades from pre-school through high school.  During the sail, Claudia (my boss in the lab) and I taught a science class about blood and the students were intelligent and able to use the things they learned in the lab during the hospital open house.  They remembered things that we talked about in class weeks before and helped educate the crew on blood types.  Tonight was an open house and creative arts demonstration and I was amazed by the talent of all the students.  One of the reasons that I've always been impressed is with student work experience.  Each of the high school and middle school students applies for a job on the ship that they are interested in.  Nursing, dental, lab, engineering, photographer, media, or sales.  For a week the student works beside crew members to get an idea of what the job is and to see if they would be interested in that career.  I was able to have Lara as my student for the week.  My goal for the week was for Lara to draw blood from a crew member.  By the end of the first day we had to start an entire new set of goals. It was amazing.  By the end of the week she was drawing blood from crew, patients and also drew a pint of blood for a patient in the O.R needing a blood transfusion.  It isn't easy to focus on your work when you are drawing blood from a child (or a grown up that acts like a child) but Lara was professional and compassionate to everyone.  When she wasn't being the student vampire she was working in the lab running tests on the blood. During the week Lara joined me on the Emergency Medical Team for a fire drill and visited the O.R to observe a surgery.  I was impressed with the skill that Lara was able to show after only a few days training.  It was also a hilarious week of fun but hopefully noone will ever see the hour long video of us laughing while Linda tried to interview us.  I had a great time growing up and was able to experience many different things but never anything like work experience week.  One of the best things is that after her week Lara decided to pursue a career in medicine and is applying to University.  Whatever she decides to do, Lara will do great.  

Rambles of today

Today some pretty amazing things happened.  Yesterday and today I was asked to help in Admissions as an admissions nurse.  This is an interesting job that has many good things and some challenging things with it.  The patients arrive in the morning.  One by one they come to the 3 nurses in the tent (think MASH T.V show kind of tent) and we go through the paperwork, vitals, history, and draw labs.   Usually I just appear for the last step in the process to draw blood for lab work.  Hearing the stories of travel to the ship, life, and what happened to bring them to us is my favorite part.  Today the translator kept asking me to keep writing but I was distracted listening to the stories.  I could write a book about the people I met today.  One little boy was 8 years old and loves to study English in school.  However, after much proding he admitted that he likes football (soccer) more than school.  Of course I pulled out my football stickers and told him that I did too and that made him laugh. There was also a little girl named Naomi.  Her story made me cry and soon I will share it will you, but not in this happy blog.  Naomi is an energetic happy 4 year old.  She reminds me of my neice Peyton and is very very smart.    It has to be scary to come to the ship.  It is a giant white ship full of crazy people.  People here spend quite a bit of time out of doors and the hospital is on Deck 3 with no windows.  It feels closed in.  Tonight I went into the hospital to see Naomi and draw labs from a few new patients and enjoyed looking around and seeing familiar faces.  Usually people don't want to see me coming since it is mostly for blood draws.
Ok on to the rest of the day.  A patient was in surgery and needed a lot of blood today.  While trying to help admissions I was paged back on to the ship several times to draw pints of blood from donors to give to the patient in surgery.  We gave 3 units and when she needed one more I donated my blood to her.  All of us have been screened and cross matched to the patient, but needing 4 is pretty rare.  There is something about giving your own blood to save someone that connects you to that person.
At the end of my day I went to one of the hospital wards and played with balloons and laughed with some of the kids.  It was a good end to a very long and exhausting work day.  Thanks for letting me ramble on and on, and I hope that you all are well.

Pizza delivery and live chickens

We have several translators that work in admissions.  Helga, Blessing, Joel, and Florence have kept me laughing over the last 10 weeks.  Last week I walked in the admission tent and Florence asked me how I like to make my pizza.  Do  you mean what toppings I like?  No, she wanted to know step by step how I make it.  So of course I explained.  I pick up the phone, dial a number, and 30 minutes later pizza shows up at the door.  It made perfect sense to me, but judging from the looks they all gave me, it is not a familiar concept here.  You can walk up to someone on the street selling food.  Usually it's a stew with different ingredients that they serve over rice in a bowl.  Pizza Hut delivery is still a strange concept.
Today was a normal day traveling out to the eye screening site to assist the eye team.  I'm not sure how many people we saw today, but near the end of the line the nurse walked past a lady, turned back and told me that she had a chicken.  Actually, she explained by saying that she either has a chicken with her or just clucked.  As I walked up I hoped that she had a chicken with her, because even though that is strange it would be worse if SHE was clucking!  She did have a chicken.  A live chicken with its head sticking out of the bag.  Of course we had to tell everyone and after calling on the radio (don't tell the captain we used the official radios for a chicken) our entire team came over. The women was getting very upset and a man near her called out that "she didn't want to sell the chicken" that was fine since we didn't want to buy the chicken.  We all laughed for awhile and tried to explain that we wouldn't know what to do with it if we did buy it.  Isaac, one of the translators tried to explain to me how to prepare the chicken, but it was gross so I won't share it.   I can almost picture this woman leaving her house to go to the eye clinic and her husband calling out to her to pick up some chicken on her way home.   TIA.  This is Africa.

Mom

A million billion years ago, before the earth crust had cooled, a wonderful thing happened.  Pamela (my mom) was born.  Yes, that makes her really old, but she looks good for her age.  Not a wrinkle or a gray hair to be seen.  Mostly because of botox and hair dye, but she looks great.  Surprisingly, my mom has been around for my whole life.  She had the brilliant idea to put me in a Santa suit when I came home from the hospital, but other than that she has amazing ideas. 
I'm the least sentimental person in the world so I don't usually make big speeches about how great people are but today seems like a good day to break that rule. 
Since we don't get to chose our families you just kind of hope for the best.  I got the best.  My mom always took care of us, made us be on time for everything.  Actually, she really made us be 30 minutes early.  She walked us to the school bus every morning, but that was also to make sure we got on the school bus.  Mom let us get dirty, play sports, make messes, and only locked us out of the house when the air conditioning was on and she said that we were letting the cold out.  She used to make a hrrump kind of noise when my dad was umpiring baseball games to let him know that she didn't agree with his decisions.  Then she learned how to be an umpire so she could work the games with him.  Mom took care of the entire neighborhood.  If anything went wrong, they came to my mom.  When the boys across the street got burned on his legs he ran over to my mom for help.  Many times I would hear my parents out on the front porch talking to everyone about everything.  My mom babysat other kids full time when my brother and I were growing up.  Those kids still come back 20 years later to talk and to have a drink of my moms wonderful iced tea.   Mom was always our cheering section, our guidance, our warden, and usually had the best ideas for fun.  That includes loading up the back of the truck with kids from the neighborhood and going to the pool.  Don't panic, that was back when it was still legal to ride in the back of a truck. 
Childhood was a long time ago.  Mom's support has continued through college, living on my own, traveling, and finally living on a ship in Africa.  We don't always agree.  I'm pretty sure it is because we are identical and think alike, but don't want to admit it.  When I grow up (mom is laughing her ass off at that thought) I want to be just like my mom.  To be adored by my friends, family, and random strangers.  Yes, did I forget to mention the fact that she likes to talk to random strangers?  It still embarrasses me, but dont' tell my mom that when she isn't around I do it too!  Every day.  Every single day (even when I don't want to admit it) I'm glad that I have the mom I have.  Thankful is a better word.  So Happy Birthday Mom!  I love you!