Giving Blood, Sweat, & Tears at Work!

When someone uses the term "Blood, Sweat, & Tears" we get the idea of hard work. For sure, if you work in Food Service you are WORKING HARD! I guarantee it. You will sweat, at least at some point. Tears? There are pounds/kilograms of onions to peel and prepare each day. Blood? Hopefully not! Unless you have agreed to be part of the ships blood bank for patients. Then I most definitely hope you get to give blood!

Mercy Ships has a unique blood donation system. They only use whole blood that contains plasma because they can’t separate it on the ship. The crew on-board the ship are literally a “walking blood bank” because there is no means of storing blood past 72 hours here on the vessel.

On the Africa Mercy they test every donor’s blood before the need arises. This allows the lab to call crew members immediately to start the process of donating blood.

Did you know what Encephalocele is?

Victory

If you have ever heard about the amazing work that Mercy ships does you have heard about facial tumors, cleft lips & palates, plastic surgery for burn patients, obstetric fistulas, and eye surgeries to name a few. Mercy ships does a lot of things but did you know we do crainiotomies? No? Me neither until serving on board in 2008. 

These patients are not the ones on the Mercy Ships commercials or websites. So most of the nurses that come are quite surprised to hear that we do crainiofacial surgery.