A new Ghanian Adventure Begins!!

Many years ago, I learned about the Mercy Ships organization and the free specialty surgical care they provide to underserved communities in Africa. It has always been a dream of mine to serve on one of the ships, but because of their volunteer requirements—and my pesky full-time job—it was never really a reality. Until now!

One of the benefits of locums medicine is being able to choose your assignments and work locations, which has finally given me the opportunity to volunteer on the Mercy Ship for a month.

I’ll be leaving for Ghana on September 11th to begin my month aboard the ship. I’m incredibly excited, but at the same time, I’m very nervous about the whole experience. I’ve completed the online training, which somehow managed to create more questions than answers. But at some point, you just have to jump in with both feet, hope for the best, and figure things out one day at a time.

I’m nervous about being completely stir-crazy living on a ship. Will the other volunteers be nice? Is the food going to be horrible? And perhaps most importantly…who will be my roommate?!

What I do know is surgery.

And that gives me some comfort. No matter what new things I encounter on the ship, the surgeries themselves are the same ones I’ve been doing throughout my career—whether that’s in St. Louis, at my new locums assignment in Farmington, Missouri, my future job in Alton, Illinois, at BMC in northern Ghana, or floating somewhere on a ship.

Surgery is surgery.

Operating rooms, for the most part, are the same. A table, lights, an anesthesia machine, and instruments are all you really need for a successful operation—although my training in northern Ghana might challenge the premise that you need all of those things, all at once!

In the end, it’s simply the surgeon, the patient, and the OR staff coming together in a unique situation to hopefully change a patient’s life for the better.

I know that. I can do that.

So as I look forward to this adventure, I keep reminding myself: if I hate everything else about this experience, I LOVE surgery. And in the end, the patients and I will just have to come out on top.

When I first applied to Mercy Ships more than a year ago, I didn’t intend to serve in Ghana. At the time, the Global Mercy was in Sierra Leone and the Africa Mercy was in Madagascar. But as fate would have it, the Global Mercy arrived in Ghana on August 19th to begin an eleven-month period of service to the country.

Although I was initially disappointed that I wouldn’t get to visit and experience another country, honestly, this feels right.

I know and understand the culture, which I think will make adapting to everything else a little easier. It will also give me the opportunity to travel to the Baptist Medical Centre in Nalerigu for a few weeks after I leave the ship—which I am, of course, super excited about.

Over the next six weeks, I hope to share some of the adventures, challenges, surprises, and experiences from my time aboard the Global Mercy and up at BMC.

I hope you’ll enjoy coming along for the ride!