January 20, 2024

Well, this was not part of the itinerary!

I woke up in the morning and had elevated heart rate upon exertion. I decided it best to go to the ship clinic. My blood work revealed I has a D-dimer level of 3190. (Simply stated, D-dimer is an undetectable protein fragment produced when a blood clot forms in your body. It is one of the fibrin degradation products that results from the breakdown of blood clots, but it doesn’t specify the type or location of the clot. Normal Range is 0.0-500ng/ml)

It was best I disembark the ship and go to a hospital.

Grenada is in the West Indies. Having lived in Puerto Rico for 5 years, I was familiar with health care in the Caribbean. I was not prepared for St. Georges Hospital.

No air conditioning, no hot water, no CT equipment and no cardiologist. It was quickly determined that it was best for me to be air-lifted back to the states, but St. Georges Hospital was going to be my home for the next 3 days until airlift was available.

The theme of this blog is “Seeing God’s Hand At Work Around The World”. He was preparing to show me His hand.

All the patients are woken up at 3:00 a.m. because it is the coolest time of the shift to provide patient care. I could hear and smell gallant nurses caring for and cleaning male patients many who had defecated on themselves during the night. Some of the nurses were singing to themselves as they emptied bed pans.

The male patient next to me (there is only 1 open male unit) suffered from delirium and would yell “yay, yay, yay” insufferably during the night. With time I learned to view his utterings as having my own cheerleader lying in the bed next to me encouraging me to make it through the night.

And “Fifty” (no idea where the name came from) an all-purpose maintenance man who would pass by and randomly yell into the unit: “No worries, everything is going to be all right”.

All part of God’s hand at work.

And lest I forget Phillipe, the taxicab driver who drove Chongae to a small hotel close to the hospital to wait for our departure. He would come by the hospital to sincerely see how I was doing. For no other reason other than he cared.

I firmly believe that it is not the places you visit but the people you meet that makes travel meaningful.

Phillipe will be remembered as one of those people.

Thanks for traveling with us.

To be continued…