Last Saturday night, a brand new stake president sent me an urgent email pleading for help. A bishop had just told him they had a ward member in the hospital covered with severe third-degree burns, the hospital bills had mounted way beyond the capacity of her family and the bishop was asking him what to do. The stake president had visited the sister that evening with his wife who is a nurse and they came away extremely shaken.
Faith, a 21-year old member had been caught last month in a flash fire in her housing compound which killed the three other occupants in the room and left her horribly burned on her head, both arms and legs. The stake president sent me a few gruesome photos that showed her horribly charred, unbandaged limbs and face as she lay in a makeshift hospital room. He was gravely concerned that her condition was well beyond the treatment capabilities of the local hospital and beyond his authorization levels for medical assistance. “President, she is going to die. What do I do?”
I fired off the photos and a review of the situation to the Area Welfare Manager, the Area Seventy and Area Medical Adviser in Accra that night asking them to engage immediately. The team swung into action early Sunday morning and I spent that morning and afternoon juggling travel and Church meetings with a blizzard of calls, emails and texts between the hospital, the stake president, the Area Medical adviser, a burn center physician in Ghana and the Area Presidency. Before noon, we had authorization to engage whatever help was needed. The preliminary analysis was that the extensive remaining circumferential burned tissue needed to be excised immediately to prevent septic shock, properly bandaged, followed by a series of extensive grafts and physical therapy. That treatment, clearly not possible in the hospital where she lay, likely needed to be done in a burn center, of which Liberia has zero, the nearest being in Accra, Ghana. It wasn’t clear if Faith would be able to make that trip, even in a Medevac plane. Also, that plan would take her away from her family, who had been providing round-the-clock support at the local hospital.
I asked for 24 hours to get a independent onsite analysis of the patient to confirm the preliminary views and a suggested path forward. I called Dr. Seton, an American surgeon based at a local Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital in Monrovia who has been a wonderful resource for our mission. She manages to fit our missionaries into her crazy schedule to personally handle a myriad of diagnostics and minor surgeries. She told me that with an invitation from the hospital, she would try to find time to accompany me to visit Faith and give her assessment. We got the invitation from the hospital on Sunday night and Monday afternoon Dr. Seton squeezed out a time slot, so Michelle and I picked her up and took her and her 3-year old adopted son over to visit Faith. Michelle stayed with her son at our nearby chapel while Dr. Seton and I accompanied the stake president to the hospital to examine Faith. As we made our way into the shared room, her family parted and she gave us a weak pained smile, but winced and grimaced as Dr. Seton gently inspected each of her limbs.
Dr. Seton confirmed much of the previous diagnosis, but determined that the extent of the burn area was more in the range of 20-30%, not the feared 40-50%, which indicated much more healthy skin available for grafting. More importantly, she indicated that Faith’s condition was very similar to one she had successfully treated last year and she was confident that she could handle the necessary grafts and treatment at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital closer to downtown Monrovia, if we could arrange to ship in some specialized bandages and burn treatment materials, and if the family would agree to continue support, including with the physical therapy. Her estimate of the overall cost of the local treatment was a tiny sliver of the transport to and treatment cost at the Ghana burn center and would allow the family to stay engaged in support. They all enthusiastically agreed to do whatever was needed.
We confirmed the path forward with Accra, arranged for local transport for Faith on Tuesday to start treatment, the shipments of the medical supplies and left Faith and her family glowing with the promise of a future.
Four days later, the stake president sent the team a photo of Faith, newly bandaged up and beaming, noting that her “health, appearance, posture, speech and movement” were greatly improved, and her “testimony of and love for her Heavenly father has grown as he has spared her life for a cause that she will pursue after her recovery.”
Last Monday night when we got home, I messaged my kids, “I think we did something good in the world today. It feels good.” Their query back, “Well, what did you do?”
“We gave Faith hope.”
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