The Twins

Meet the twins, Obei (pronounced "Obey") and Atsou (pronounced "Achoo"). Believe it or not they are twins, 5 months old.  They've both been breastfed since birth, but the difference is Atsou has a cleft lip and palate. The cleft palate makes it almost impossible for him to create enough suction to get enough milk. No matter how much he breastfeeds he will never be able to get as much milk as Obei. In fact he's most likely been burning more calories feeding than he has been able to take in.

In this photo Obei weighs 7 kg (about 15.4 pounds) and Atsou weighs 3.5 kg (7.7 pounds). While Obei looks huge in this photo, she is actually normal size for a 5 month old. Atsou is just that small! 

1 year ago.

1 year ago I had no idea what poverty was actually like. 

1 year ago I had never eaten meat without knowing exactly what kind of meat it was. 

1 year ago I had never bought snacks off the top of someone's head. 

1 year ago I had no idea mothers could throw away their babies for a simple deformity. 

1 year ago I had no idea there were places in the world without adequate healthcare. 

1 year ago I had never seen a man carry a refrigerator on his head. 

1 year ago I didn't know where all the used clothes, cars and toys go when no one else wants them.  

1 year ago I thought I knew who I was and what the world was about. 

1 year ago I had never been to Africa.

Supermodel Baby

Here is one of the babies who has already gotten surgery for her cleft lip. My friend Melissa nicknamed her "Supermodel" (read her blog post about it) and other nurses nicknamed her "FluffyHead". Seriously I don't think she could get any cuter! I'm following her for a short time after her surgery to make sure she's gaining weight and doing well. She'll also have a follow-up procedure in 6 weeks. After that she is going to be hard to say goodbye to!

We have to do what?

A hospital on a ship has to think about all kinds of things. Like how to evacuate the entire hospital in case of an emergency. A couple of weeks ago we had a hospital evacuation drill. Using crew members posing as patients they evacuated everyone from the 3rd deck of the ship to the 5th and then down onto the dock! The crazy thing is we have to take people UP the stairs to take them out of the hospital. Here are some photos of practicing before the drill. 

Al Donald's

There are no McDonald's restaurants in Togo but we did run across some golden arches, or at least half of them!  

Starting in Togo

The field service in Togo has started. There has been one week of surgery so far. Patients are already filling the wards. We have started maxillofacial surgeries and plastic surgery starts on Monday.  There are 7 babies in the Infant Feeding Program so far!

Patient line at screening day

Measuring babies at screening day

Staff photo for the hospital, I'm somewhere in the middle!

Baby Amie

Baby Amie has been in our Infant Feeding  Program since she was 2 weeks old. When she was born she weighed 3.7 pounds. We followed her in our feeding program to make sure she was gaining enough weight for surgery. She had to make it to 8.8 pounds in order to qualify and by May 30th she was 9 pounds! She had a sucessful surgery and went home with her mom a few days later.

Some days working in Africa is frustrating and discouraging but then seeing sucessful surgeries like Amie's makes the sweat, tears and long hours worth it!