This girl was just so sweet! She is 11 yrs old and has trouble speaking due to the fact her pallet was not repaired until two days ago. She was very hard to understand, but very smart. This was her first time meeting foreigners and she was really excited! She wanted to be with me everywhere and kept asking me to take her to see more Americans, because “Americans look good,” she explained to me. We went outside the afternoon before her surgery and walked around a bit. I offered to buy her ice cream. She said no because the doctors told her not to eat anything that morning due to the fact she was scheduled for surgery in the afternoon. What a great little girl! She asked if I'd be there in the operating room with her, and it "so happened" to be that my shift in the OR was at the time of her surgery. I held her hand as she went to sleep and was there when she woke up. She was such a brave girl and didn't seem scared at all!
This is us in our OR uniforms. We all have to wear hats, masks, and apprpopriate hospital clothes. I am smiling, really!
She was pretty beat after the surgery and took a while to snap out of the anesthesia. She came kicking and screaming, literally. We had to hold her on the bed to keep her from falling off, but she was fine once she woke up completely. The Chinese guy helping out (I think he's an anesthesiologist) kept tapping her head and yelling her name to get her to wake up!
That's Jared in the background. He's the 18 year old guy from Canada. He's really good with the patients here.
I saw her the next morning, and she was doing great! She's such a trooper! Unfortunetly, I wasn't able to say goodbye to her the morning she left because I was late in getting to the hospital. That was sad for me! I came to hospital an hour after I usually do and almost all the beds were empty! The children had gone home, but I'm know they are glad to be home! There are 4-6 beds in a room, typically. They usually can go home the day after their lip surgery and a couple days after cleft pallets are repaired.
I hope Yu Zhi can learn to speak well someday. It will be hard because she has already learned to talk, so please remember her before the Father. Thank you for careing!
Thanks for posting more pics!
ReplyDeleteFaith, we are following your every step...and remembering you in our "thoughts" every day! It is SO great to see pictures of you...We love you and miss you!!
ReplyDeleteFaith, we are so happy to hear your progress. We think of you often as do many others. We've talked about the importance of person-to-person contact and you're right there in the thick of it. You've already seen how kind the Chinese are to someone who is willing to make the effort to learn their language. I'm really looking forward to hearing your progress when I come back to China this fall.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing these stories. They mean a great deal to us. We will act upon this knowledge in our communication with our Father!
ReplyDeleteFaith, Your dad gave me your blog address for while you are in China. You are certainly doing God's work! Blessings on you - and thanks for sharing your experiences.
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