Our little chipmunk

There is always one little ornery kiddo that finds a very special place in your heart...for me it was Alvin. In the three years I was on the ship, I had never before met an African patient with that name...but it was a very fitting name for him because the tumor in his mouth made his cheek pooch out like a little chipmunk. On the very first day of surgery, my friend Amy and I were taking care of Alvin (I got to orient the new nurses and was thankful that one of my good friends happened to be one of them)! He was a bit cranky the morning of surgery because he couldn't eat and was hungry! So we tried to distract him with toys, which was not hard to do! In fact, I don't know if Alvin had ever seen so many toys in one place! The hospital had just opened, so we had all the toys neatly arranged off to one side of the ward (with little expectation that our efforts to organize would actually last!) and took Alvin over to find some fun toys to play with. But instead of sitting down with the other kids to play, Alvin decided he would collect all the toys he could possibly carry and take them back to his bed. We watched as he piled up the toys in his little arms to the point that he almost toppled over and then slowly made his way back to his Mama and his bed. "Whatever will keep him happy while he waits for surgery," I thought. We could save the lesson on sharing for another day. 

Soon the phone rang and we got a call for Alvin to come to the OR. We walked Alvin and his Mama over to the OR nurses and said a prayer for the surgery. Alvin would be the very first patient in Congo to receive his operation! His Mama smiled as we walked back to the ward, thankful that her precious little guy would soon be tumor-free! 

A few hours later, we saw the new little Alvin as he came back from recovery. There was no longer a tumor in his cheek, just a bandage covering the area where they had done the surgery. Alvin was sleepy and Mama looked very content as she watched her little one. She would be the first of many Mamas in Congo to see their children get the help they had been so desperately praying for. 

Alvin made a quick recovery and would frequently call me over to his bed to look at the little froggy on my stethoscope (It is a mini flashlight for checking pupils and distracting the kids and works like a charm almost every time)! He was quickly back to his usual self, laughing and playing and winning over all of our hearts.  In fact, we even made some progress in teaching him to share!