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Trip Three: Week Seven! August 3-9

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Seven weeks down, six to go! We have officially crossed the halfway mark.   Praising God for many answered prayers this week! For those who read my last blog, I shared that it had been a challenging week filled with emotional and mental lows. I am so thankful that I can share that this week, God has given me so much of his peace and his joy. Even though there were still challenging times both at work and in my personal life, God was so gracious to me. I felt his presence and that he was answering many of my prayers. I formed some new connections with people here on the ship, and also had life-giving conversations with friends at home. This week, I felt God  giving me the strength and confidence to get out of my comfort zone more and see what He might have for me.  The Lord has answered so many other prayers this week, especially one that I’ve been praying about for over a year! I am feeling so blessed and thankful to serve a God who hears me, cares about me, and meets eve...
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Trip Three: Week Six! July 27-August 2

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Six weeks down, seven to go! Nothing too out of the ordinary happened this week. We were busy in the OR, and I did not do too much outside of work throughout the week.  Because of limited anesthetic staffing and inability to run three ORs at the same time this week, two of the ORs shared an anesthetic team each day. For example, MaxFax would start their day at 8am and complete 1-2 cases before the anesthetist joined the General surgery team to start their cases later in the day. This delayed start time contributed to a few later days in the OR this week. I am thankful that my manager still offered to give me a day off this week. It is pretty rare to have a day off as an OR nurse, so I am grateful and take advantage of when that's an option! On Tuesday, I checked out a bicycle from the ship and rode to a nearby hotel & restaurant and spent the day resting by the pool and enjoying lunch.  On Wednesday evening after work, I played volleyball and pickleball with other crew dow...
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Trip Three: Week Five! July 20-26

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Five weeks down, eight to go! This week brought a little bit of much needed rest. Even though there were a couple of busy days in the OR, I overall felt like this week was not as overwhelming. At very short notice, an anesthetist was unable to come to the ship this week and next. Because of that, we are only able to run two operating rooms instead of three. While this will sadly cause a delay of surgery for a few of our patients, it allowed some of the longer term crew to have a bit of a break.  Two new general surgeons arrived over the weekend and will be staying for four weeks. One of them is American (Seattle) and the other is from Ethiopia. Tuesday was the general surgery screening day in the pre-op tent down on the dock. We saw almost 60 patients and evaluated whether or not they were a surgical candidate. The majority of the patients we saw had a hernia, hydrocele, or lipoma. There were a couple of patients who did not have a hernia, but who had been assessed earlier thi...
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