UPCOUNTRY DAY#3 PRE-SCREENING DAY!

My alarm went off at exactly 4:30am then i made a simple prayer unto the Lord” Father God please help us today so that your love can be seen through us even as we get to see every patient because we are nothing without You Amen”. Then we all gathered down stairs entered into our cars and drove to the screening site.

We arrived on site at 5:20am and we saw a massive and long line of patients waiting for us to see them but since the hospital director was on night shift and have a great mastering of screening because is was once the screening manager before he became the hospital director, he had started pre-screening some patients at 04:00am even before we arrived on site.

Then we all moved to our different stations. altogether we had four different stations after which the patients were pre-screened they will pass through the following;

• The evaluating station: At this station, the patients who were YES’s will be further evaluated by a nurse and a brief History about their problem will be taken by that nurse depending on the patient’s specialty. Also we could still say NO to the patient after being evaluated if we the patients had other health issues that was not making it safe for them to receive surgery.
• The scheduling station:After which the patients have been evaluated by the nurses we then send then to the scheduling table to be scheduled for an appointment to the ship. These patients were being scheduled by the screening team manager who was assisted by one of the missionaries from the United states but who have been living in Guinea  for so many years now so knows how to speak in some of the local languages.
• Badge printing and medication station: This station was lead by the ship pharmacist and the screening team admin and one of our day crew for language translation. They will make badges for the patients for clear identification and then give to each of the patients, Multivitamins and IRON depending on how long their appointment was in order to keep them healthy.
• The transportation station: Now this is a new thing on the ship in this field service because throughout the previous field services we have noticed that even when patients are given an appointment to come to the ship, there is something which is still stopping them from coming and so from our findings we discovered that 80% was as a result in lack of money to get to us. That’s the reason for this study.  so, one of our Maxillofacial surgeon was the one in charge of this study and was assisted by one of our day crew for translation.  I won’t go into more detail but you can email me if you wanna know more about the study because its so long to explain. but the unique goal was to make sure that our patients get to the ship after receiving an appointment.

So, That morning i wasn’t pre-screening at the gate but i was at the evaluation station. I can still remember my first patient and the smile she gave me. She was a Maxillofacial specialty because she was suffering of a problem known as Norma, at the same time she felt shy because She was missing part of her face and nostril as a result of Norma. Which is normal knowing that she have been like that for so long and have been rejected by those near by her. I tried to picture myself in her position and understood how it felt like but she left my table smiling and feeling much comfortable more than she came.

Then i saw my second patient who come with her dad. she had an intraoral tumor that have slowly been growing from the time she was born and hindering her from being the pretty little girl that she is but still at that she was still very beautiful and i could see the board smile on her father’s face knowing that his daughter is just a few steps to be released from the shame she carried along because according to father patient had to stop going to school since no one will want to relate with her at school and people will always laugh at her.

Again as i kept going, I had this 60yr old Patient who have had a cleft palate and bilateral cleft lip since the time he was born! He had this great smile on his face as i evaluated him. i was so glad that after evaluating him i could send him to the next station to be scheduled. After seeing this patient just thinking about his age and still having a cleft lip and palate that could easily be repaired at birth made me realized how much Africa as a whole is in huge need for health care.

I had evaluated so many patients who were just waiting to be scheduled. feeling hungry since i had not yet taken my breakfast, i took a break for 10mins and went back. By midday, the pre-screening had stopped at the gate and so i had more help from the other nurses who were pre-screening at the gate.

We evaluated patients until midnight! I know you will be thinking i made a mistake when i said midnight but no, we actually evaluated patients until midnight. As i said we had no plans to work that long but we we had more patients than we expected because most of them were YES’S. Our security team had to send some patients away to come the next day because they were too many.

Dinner was brought to us at the pre-screening site so we continued working. Personally for me it was the longest day of my carrier but it was a privilege for me to serve because i knew that this is what God wants me to do. It was amazing because we felt so strengthened until we saw the last patient and every patient for me was different even-though tired we kept smiling as we saw every patient.

All i could see at the end of that day was God’s amazing! It kept us going from 5:30am till midnight! Then we drove back to our hotel and i didn’t sleep until 1:00am. We all rested for the night and regained energy for the next day which wasn’t planned before we left the ship. But as i said God’s plans are always the best. It may look stupid in the beginning but the truth is behind what we see as stupid a beautiful plan….