I just finished helping out with another successful Operation Smile Mission in Tana. Like the one I helped with in August, this was a 10 day mission with 60+ medical volunteers from all over the world. We had doctors and nurses from Sweden, Russia, Italy, South Africa, India, China….and the list goes on.
Myself and 9 other PCVs helped out as translators for the 10 days. It was an exhausting experience, but definitely rewarding and one of the most memorable experiences from my service. The mission began with one day of screening past patients, and 2 days of screening new patients. Last mission they screened about 300 patients in the two days…this mission they had over 300 patients the first day, and over 500 total. Needless to say, it was a chaotic two days. I worked as a “runner,” taking patients from station to station, which included walking up 3 flights of stairs for every 10 patients to come through. After 12+ hours…I was a little tired. I thought walking patients from station to station would be easy enough…but it ended up being a nightmare. The head of the hospital ward only wanted a few patients in the hall at one time, while the doctors wanted there to be a line, and the nurses thought it should be a different way. Every person we asked gave a different set of instructions so no matter what, we were making someone mad. It was a long two days, but we survived.
Saturday afternoon was announcement day when all the patients who were screened gathered together on the basketball court and waited for numbers to be called. The selected families were visibly excited which is unusual in this culture. They couldn’t stop smiling, they grabbed our arms and thanked us, and they showed more emotion than I’ve ever seen a Malagasy person show before. But in contrast, we had to see over 300 patients turned away, which was really sad. Every family has a story about why they need the surgery, how far they traveled for it, and how it would change their life…but the team could only select 200 for surgery (a Mada record). Its sad to see people turned away, but hopefully most of them will come back in September for the next mission.
Surgery week lasted from Monday to Friday. I worked in the pre/post op ward for the week along with 2 other PCVs and a lot of Malagasy students. It was a crazy week, but really fun. We helped with translating for patients before and after surgery. Since none of the doctors spoke Malagasy, we actually got to play a huge role in the week’s activities, and I felt useful! I helped the nurses take vital signs after surgery, I taught mothers how to clean the lips, I helped the pediatrician in pre-op check-ups, and I answered tons of questions from mothers asking why there was blood in the IV or where they could get diapers and what food they could eat. It was exhausting! I also got to work with the dentist who was fitting patients with obdurators (a plastic thing they put in the mouth to cover the cleft palate). Aside from that, we were kept busy with discharging patients, checking in new patients, and dealing with random people who showed up for unknown reasons. The pre/post op nurses we got to work with were a really fun group of people. We had a Russian doctor, and Mauritian, Swedish, Australian and American nurses! But we also had to deal with the crazy woman who ran the hospital ward.
The Malagasy nurse who ran the ward tried her hardest to make our life difficult. She told us that the hospital bathroom would be locked in the night, so if patients needed to use the bathroom they would have to bring their own bucket. (100 people in a ward with no bathroom sounds like a disaster to me). She didn’t want to let parents sit on the bed with their child for the entire 24 hours they were in the hospital. She completely cancelled visiting hours. And the list goes on… She was a challenge, but we survived with some funny stories.
I can’t even imagine trying to coordinate the logistics for the mission, and while there were some small issues (running out of medicine, losing patients, losing records, etc. etc. etc….) the week was a success! The last night we had a final banquet at a really fancy hotel. It felt like a wedding reception with music from the early 90s, a dance floor and strobe lights, and a buffet. It was a great end to the week and I’m sad that I won’t be able to help out on the next mission..but by that point I should be done with service!
(Pictures to come if the internet decides to speed up!)
