Something more than medicine...

It was a busy shift on D ward. I normally work on A ward with the plastics patients, but today I was assigned to help in D ward taking care of patients with cleft lip and palates. In English, that means patients who are born with abnormal openings in their lips and or mouths (see picture below). Today I was assigned four to five patients one of whom had been having a fast heartbeat all night. Her heartbeat wasn’t scarily high, but high enough to be worrisome. The nightshift nurse I was taking over for was concerned. She had tried multiple things throughout the night to bring down this little girl’s heartbeat down to a normal rate, but was unsuccessful. As the night nurse and I talked about her, the little girl just laid there staring off into space. She didn’t seem to be interacting with her world at all. At first I thought she was just a little comatose from strong pain medication or still recovering from the drugs she’d been given during her surgery the day before.As the morning progressed I noticed her watching everything I did. She just lay there propped up on pillows following me with her eyes. At one point I needed to get a bit more invasive with my care….meaning look inside her mouth and check her IV. I brought the translator over and the patient’s grandfather helped too. She did everything I asked without complaint, but I sensed there was still something wrong. She was so stoic, non-interactive and seemed to stare right past me when I talked to her and tried to get her to smile. Not normal behavior for a 7-8 year old little girl. As I talked to her I sensed the Holy Spirit say maybe she’s just scared. I asked through the translator if she was scared. As the translator asked her in Malagasy I watched her face intently. She didn’t nod or speak, but a few seconds later huge crocodile tears started to fall from her eyes and stream down her cheeks. She was scared. This little girl had come back from surgery with very little understanding of what we had done to her face. Then she woke up with a sore throat, pain in her lips and mouth from where we had sewn her cleft lip shut and an IV in her foot. She was frightened and the only way she was allowing us to see this through a fast heartbeat.When she started to cry I leaned over and rubbed her back and told her in English it was ok; she was going to be ok. The translator said this to her in Malagasy. I then held out my hands for her to come to me. She held up her arms to me and as I picked her up she immediately wrapped her legs tight around my waist and placed her cheek against mine. It was all I could do to not cry myself. This poor little girl just needed some tangible loving. And I was more than happy to stand there and cuddle her. The incredible part was when I laid her back in bed and checked her heartbeat; it had come down to almost a normal range. It was all fixed by a hug!I wish I could say my hugs fix all the patients here, but that’s not the case. I work with an amazing team of doctors, nurses, physical therapists, translators, pharmacists, lab technicians and many others who God has called and equipped to work aboard this floating hospital!