Chris spends a night in the AFM Hospital!

After a day of fun activities on the dock and around the ship in celebration of Mercy Ships 30th Anniversary, we had just spent a lovely evening of worship and reflection on Mercy Ships history and were leaving the cafe after having a sociable time with other crew and Emma came in and told us Chris had slipped over and hurt himself. He had been playing with some of the other young people on board and fell, landing awkwardly on his arm. There was already a nurse with him, but it was immediately clear that he had broken his arm. The bone just above the wrist was bulging in an abnormal way. Even through the dressing in the picture below you can see the bulge!!



We took him down to the Hospital where he was examined and then sent for X-Ray. The Crew Physician - Dr. Craig Albrecht confirmed that his arm was broken and that he would need surgery the following morning to manipulate the bone back into position.

Chris was given pain medication to ease his increasing discomfort and spent a fitful night on ICU - not ....I hasten to add because he needed ICU care, but because its a small quiet ward that had no other patients. He was set up with an IV drip in preparation for surgery, scheduled for around 8:30am the following morning. He didn't sleep particularly well but was in reasonable spirits when we arrived down to see him at 8am.
The pic below shows him just before going into the OR just after we all prayed with him. I'm told one of the surgeons has a pic of Chris actually during the surgery which I will get off him and add to this report later.



I was able to accompany Chris into the OR and stay with him until he was asleep. The procedure probably took no more than 10 minutes before the process of waking him started. He was returned to the ICU ward about one hour after surgery sporting a bright orange cast!



He was later taken for a further X-Ray and was back home in the cabin with us around 12:30 lunch time. He slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon.
He received the best possible care from a team of our own Surgical and Nursing staff, who we cannot speak more highly of. The love and care shown to Chris and to us was outstanding. Thank you to all involved:


Dr Leo Cheng - Surgeon
Dr. Craig Albrecht - Crew Physician
Dr. Derek Pearce - Consultant Anaesthetist
Tracey Jackson & Sarah O'Neill - Anaesthesia Providers
Linda Vicalvi - X-Ray Technician
Anneli Persson & Mary Peters - O.R Nurses
Brenda Howson, Andrea Visser & Todd Woods - Ward Nurses

You are all awesome!

We took Chris to see the Crew Phsyician the following day and he showed us the X-Ray taken after Surgery showing Chris's radius nicely re-aligned.