The Floating Hospital My Life

THEY ROAR

# My life. #

I'm Iona and this is my home.

But it's not an ordinary ship, it's actually a floating hospital

that saves hundreds of lives each year.

I love living on the ship, it's such an amazing experience,

everybody is kind of like one big family.

Me and my family travel all over the world

helping people in some of the poorest places.

One of the best things is I get to make friends with the young patients

who come on board.

People like Grace, who's having a really tough time fitting in.

An operation would change Grace's life for ever.

But will such a big operation work?

Come on board with me and find out what goes on

in the floating hospital.

So, I live on Deck 5 on the ship

and I've lived here for seven years.

The ship is not a typical place to live.

Often you can become bored cos you can't just nip to the cinema

or go for a walk

but I love living on the ship, it's such an amazing experience

to live in a completely different culture

with people from all over the world.

I have an older sister, Rachel, who's 16

and a younger brother, Nathaniel, who's 11

and my mum and my dad are also here.

This is a plan of our ship.

It's so huge it's the best way to show you around.

So, this is where I live. You can come in.

This is my brother's bedroom.

He sleeps on the bottom bunk.

It's really messy, a real boy's room.

This is our bathroom - really small, just like a shower and a toilet,

sink, but we manage.

And this is mine and my sister's bedroom -

we've shared a room for seven years now.

I sleep on the bottom bunk and she has the top bunk.

Obviously, this whole room isn't my space.

This bed right here is my personal space.

I mean, this is pretty much all my stuff,

is in this one little room.

And then this is our living areas, we have a little kitchen area.

That's my mum and a living area with, you know,

some nice chairs to relax in.

And this is my parent's bedroom, they have the biggest bedroom

of our whole family.

Because the walls are so thin, if we put a screw through it to, like,

hang something on the wall, it just goes right through.

So, instead, all of our walls are magnetic,

so we use magnets to stick everything up, so...

you can just stick anything anywhere you like.

So, at the minute we are in Point Noire in Congo

and previously we were travelling up and down the west coast of Africa

to places such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Togo, Benin.

Congo is one of the poorest places in the world.

People only get paid around £4.50 a day for their work.

This is definitely a harder way of life

but the people here in West Africa - I see it quite a lot -

they are always very rich in terms of joy

and they are always ready to smile or wave or say hello and greet you.

Like many African countries, the healthcare available is very basic.

That's why the Africa Mercy has come here to serve as a free hospital

to the people who need it.

When we come into a country, we try and tell as many people

as possible about Mercy Ship so if they do have a condition

we can at least take a look at them.

Thousands of people travel from all over the country

to line up and see if the doctors on board can help them.

The patients come through the main gate at the end of the dock

and then they come to this tent here to get seen by a doctor.

Once the patients have been seen by a doctor,

if we can help them, we send them onto the ship,

and if we can't help them, we have to send them home.

Someone who's hoping her life could be changed for ever is

18-year-old Grace. She's travelled hundreds of miles from Kinshasa.

The doctors think Grace has a tumour called...

It's a type of growth that starts in the jaw.

It begins in the cells that make the enamel on your teeth.

The tumour grows and grows through the jawbone,

making it swell up and cause pain.

In the UK, this would have been picked up by a dentist

early enough for it not be a problem

but now an operation is the only way to treat it.

It can be really scary going into a hospital

but we try to make it easier for everyone who comes to our ship.

One of the things we do on board is visit our patients to

get to know them, to give them something to do to pass the time

while they are healing or waiting for their surgery.

And, this week, I'm going to be meeting one of the patients

on board and her name is Grace.

-TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH:

-I'm 18 years old.

I'll work helping people.

So, she's coming on board for the first time.

So it's going to be overwhelming for her but come with me

and we can go and meet her.

I've come to this ship to get my tumour removed.

I've seen this kind of thing before.

And you have to see the person beneath the tumour

or whatever it is that they have.

Congo being a French-speaking country,

a lot of the people here speak French.

My French...is not very good. I don't know very many words

but I think with translators and my little bit of French

and my hand gestures, my main points will get across.

-Hello, bonjour.

-Bonjour.

-Ca va?

-Ca va, bien.

How was your journey?

SPEAKING IN FRENCH

INAUDIBLE

-That's good.

-Yeah.

You come with me and I'm going to show you my home.

I'm really excited to meet someone from the Congo,

to get to know how her life is.

'With such different backgrounds sometimes it's difficult'

to find a common point that you can connect with.

But, eventually, you do find something that is similar.

You try and score.

Oh, so close.

LAUGHTER

If I was Grace and I had this huge tumour, erm,

I think it would be really difficult and probably very embarrassing

for her as well. And so it would be...

you'd be afraid to reach out to people

for fear of being pushed away or being made fun of.

Everything on board is new for Grace,

so I'm going to give her some time to settle in.

For me, living on board with 20 other families

means there is always someone to hang out with.

Here we go, guys!

I would say the best thing about living on the ship

is the community aspect.

Erm, everybody is like one big family and we all help each other

and encourage each other and that's really cool.

But living as one big family has its downsides, too.

Did we actually win?

If you get in a fight with somebody,

you can't just avoid them cos you're always around them.

You eat your meals together,

you can see each other just walking through the hallways.

LAUGHTER

You're so short, you have no chin!

Yeah... No, in the pan!

SHE LAUGHS

One of my favourite times of the week is pancake Friday.

The best bit is when you get to cook in the ship's massive kitchen.

Oh, no, actually, it's not bad.

When we have some free time me and my family like to go out

and spend some time together to relax.

This week, we're travelling out to do some hiking together in Congo

at a nearby gorge.

Just don't step on the rope.

The hike takes about an hour.

It's so steep that we keep falling down at various parts.

That was the easy bit.

Natty stumbles across a praying mantis.

He's always playing with strange creatures.

So we're looking for different shells on the beach.

I found some nice ones.

It's a real adventure living on the other side of the world

but I do miss some things.

Back at home, most of my friends...

I mean, I do still know a couple of people

but we haven't really...

interacted, you know, hung out socially or whatever

for, like, seven years. So, I mean, you can't really keep

a relationship going, like a friendship going for...

seven-plus years and expect to come back

and find everything's just exactly how you left it.

It's the night before Grace's operation.

I know hospitals can be scary so I've come by to see how she is.

'I've brought a game along so we can play together even though

'we don't speak the same language.

'There's not a lot to do on the ward'

and it's really nice to have a friend that will come

and hang out with you and do things with you.

"Adopt a patient" is really good cos you can learn so many things

from the patients, like, sometimes they will try and teach you

their language or playing new games with them

maybe that you've never played before.

'I'm going to give Grace some space to be with her mum.'

But I've got other patients to visit.

This is Fredrich, he's 11.

It's very nice to meet you.

Fredrich is going to have an operation to remove

the growth on his neck in one of the five operating theatres on board.

In the local schools and communities,

children with disfigurements are often mocked or ridiculed.

Last year, there was a boy that came and he was afraid to go to school

because the children there were so mean to him.

But we welcome everyone to our hospital.

Every week, hundreds of patients are treated for

all kinds of things, from burn injuries to eye conditions.

It takes a huge team of people to keep a floating hospital working.

And it's not just the doctors and nurses,

there are lots of other people.

My mum and dad are part of that, too.

My mum is a...

..which means she helps new crew settle in

when they are on board.

My dad is the...

..And manages the ship's day-to-day duties.

And this is the bridge, where they steer the ship.

And I am sitting in the captain's chair. Yeah.

It's very comfortable!

I should take a nap.

If I was the captain...

we would just sail to... I don't know, maybe the Caribbean

or something. Stay there for a while!

It's not that interesting if you're in port.

If we were sailing, people could come visit the bridge

during visiting hours.

And, kind of, watch them sail the ship.

How do you control the ship?

Well, we have a main control station for the steering

and the engines right here in the centre of the ship.

'As well as being the ship's captain,

'Tim is one of our family friends.'

And what's this station for?

This station over here is all about navigation.

We have electronic and paper charts

which allows us to monitor the weather and that sort of thing.

And why are these encased in plastic?

We have these here to protect the controls while we're sailing.

So that someone doesn't inadvertently walk up and sort of...

SHE LAUGHS

-..push it full forward and we start to plane away.

-Off we go!

So this is where we get our food. We have a very wide variety of food.

Today, it's potatoes and chicken pot pie.

It's a bit like eating all your meals in the school canteen.

Some of the things that bug me about the ship -

little things you wouldn't really think you'd miss like...

a more wider variety of cereal or nice fresh milk

or good cheese or whatever.

This is Deck 3, it contains our

four wards with 80 patient beds

as well as our five operating theatres.

One of the coolest places on the ship is the top deck.

So this is the pool we have on board.

I don't use the pool very much

but sometimes we'll come up and have, like, a pizza pool party.

And my brother often comes up here and hangs out with his friends.

Why do you have all the machinery downstairs?

Well, you see, the ship is like a small city.

Reiner spends a lot of his time down here.

So we have everything from the sewage plant treatment

to the power generation and everything that you find

in a small city, you can actually find in this...

on our ship.

ALARM BLARES

What is this alarm... that's going off?

-That's the telephone.

-And the other one?

That comes on whenever we have an alarm in the engine room.

Anything that happen there is connected to the alarm system here.

What would happen if you just pushed one of these buttons at random?

What if I was to push... this red one right there?

-That one doesn't work now so you can push it.

-Oh.

-HE CHUCKLES

-'I just can't resist!'

ALARM BLARES

We're going to see Grace. It's the morning of her surgery,

so she might be a bit nervous so we're going to go

and see how she's feeling.

Give her a bit of encouragement for her surgery.

-Bonjour.

-ALL: Bonjour.

Ca va?

GRACE LAUGHS

Are you feeling nervous about your surgery?

TRANSLATOR SPEAKS IN FRENCH

-Oui.

-..nervous, oui.

'Grace's surgeon is one of my dad's friends.'

The surgeon is a really good surgeon.

TRANSLATOR SPEAKS IN FRENCH

What difference do you think it will make, the surgery...?

SHE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

She says she will become... It will change a lot.

She will become pretty, that's one of the things that she said.

And I told her, she's already pretty.

What time is she going to surgery?

It will probably be between 9 and 9.15.

'But Grace's operation isn't just about changing the way she looks.'

If she didn't have the surgery,

she would die and she would die of slow suffocation,

meaning that, as the tumour pushes further and further into her mouth,

you find it harder and harder to breathe.

Anybody's been to the swimming baths and had someone hold

your head under the water for longer than you're comfortable with,

you're thinking only one thing -

"Get my nose above the water."

Because our desire to breathe

is the strongest of all of our drives.

..the healing of her body and will bring her safely back. Amen.

Take her hand, Iona.

My faith in...

..in Jesus is definitely a huge part of my life

and it affects all the choices I make and everything that I do.

Especially when interacting with patients,

my faith comes into play a lot.

Because...on the ship, we talk about not just healing

the outside of a person but trying to heal the inside as well

and so we try to share the love of God

and heal those traumatic emotional experiences that they've had.

I know Gary fairly well

and I want to know more about how he's going to save Grace's life.

So what is the procedure today?

Today, we have to remove the tumour and her lower jaw

and get it completely away cleanly... so that it won't come back.

-And is this difficult?

-I would say that it's normal for us

here on this ship but it is difficult.

Um, what kind of change is this going to make to her life?

Yeah, for her... she will live, that's the big one.

It's always a tense time when anyone comes into surgery

but Grace has become a friend to me in these last couple of days.

I'm praying that the operation is a success for her

and everything goes smoothly.

The first job is to remove the tumour.

It's going very well, it's a difficult tumour,

it's got a very strong blood supply so we're having to work...

..carefully and quickly here

to move things along. We're making good progress.

This has to last her entire life.

She's only 18.

Next, Gary has to rebuild Grace's jaw.

This is the material that we use to take the place of the jaw.

-TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH:

-I'm not nervous. I'm good.

And when this is over I just want to give her a great big hug.

BEEPING

And now we are closing the skin but we are leaving extra skin

because we know that the skin will shrink

over the next three months.

All Grace's mum and I can do is wait.

And once the skin takes its final position, she will look...

like she did...

so that will be wonderful.

After a long wait, Grace's operation is finally over.

I'm not allowed to see Grace straight after surgery,

so I catch up with Dr Garry.

So how did the surgery go today?

Yep, very pleased.

It took... about four, four and a half hours.

The tumour that we took out ended up being about the size of a

rugby ball and then once that's out, you need to put something in place,

otherwise the face will just hang down,

there wouldn't be anything there.

That's when we took the piece of titanium

and fitted it in and made sure that her mouth

opens and closes in the right way

and everything's the right shape and then closed the skin with stitches

and then...we're finished and, er... took a while but...

it's came out well.

While Grace recovers, I have to go back to school.

It's like a regular school, except the class sizes are a lot smaller.

So we've just had our lunch break and now we're back off to school.

I'm going to my maths class

and Rachel's off to take her online classes. Let's go.

Because my school is on board,

I can nip home for lunch every day

and there is no excuse for forgetting your homework!

There are so many different cultures and accents on the ship,

often people, especially me, pick them up and kind of blend them.

I do it.

I've formed my own little lingo but, yeah, I think it's really cool,

you get to experience completely different cultures

and learn about new cultures, new experiences,

instead of just textbooks or whatever.

LAUGHTER

MUSIC: "What I Go To School For" by Busted

For PE, we don't have a space big enough

for a proper game of football or basketball,

so we invented our own.

This is a mix of rugby, basketball and football, I think.

It's probably the three main ones here!

# That's what I go to school for. #

Our school is definitely not normal.

So, since we don't have someone employed to clean

the school for us,

all the students have to clean the school for the teachers.

Nobody likes clean-up.

Usually, I don't get up to mischief

but sometimes I think some of the boys do, not to be stereotypical

but I have never had detention on the ship!

I would probably feel really ashamed of myself!

SHE CHUCKLES

Each year, we get our class photo taken on the dock.

The photo's a great way to remind us of each place we have visited.

And done! Yay!

CHEERING

Just going to catch up with Grace and see how she's doing

after her surgery.

This is a very big day for Grace, she's having her bandages changed

and she'll see herself for the first time since the operation.

Because of the procedure, she is still quite swollen

but the doctors said that this is normal

straight after a big operation

and that it will gradually go down over the next few weeks.

You have to look in the mirror to see.

It's the first time she has really been able to look at herself

since the operation.

I know already that the surgery

is going to make a massive difference to Grace

and it's exciting to think that soon

she will be able to lead a normal life.

Bonjour, Grace! Ca va?

Bonjour, mama. Ca va!

-Ca va, et tois?

-Yeah, ca va.

QUIET LAUGHTER

'In three months' time, she'll need to come back

'for another final operation to help strengthen her new jaw

'and then she'll be back to the old Grace.'

-TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH:

-She's a girl, after all,

and girls just want to feel pretty.

SPEAKING IN FRENCH

So Grace is doing really well.

Um, in the surgery, they took the tumour out,

so her face has to shrink. Her skin wall...

It will eventually shrink back and be normal.

Takes about six months.

But already, since the very last time I came to see her, it's shrunk

a huge amount so she's doing really, really well.

MUSIC: "Roar" by Katy Perry

Four days after the operation, Grace is well enough to go out on deck.

She's doing a lot better and is starting to get her smile back.

After a week aboard the floating hospital,

it's time for Grace to leave.

# You hear my voice, you hear that sound

# Like thunder... #

Although she's leaving the ship, she won't be far away.

For the next few weeks, her and her mum will be

staying at a clinic nearby until she has fully recovered.

# I got the eye of the tiger

# A fighter

# Dancing through the fire

# Cos I am champion... #

I think that Grace's future looks a lot brighter.

TRANSLATION: I feel fine. I am comfortable. I am happy.

I'm going to visit Grace at the Hope Centre and catch up with her,

see how she's doing and hopefully hang out with her, as well.

'It's been two months since Grace's operation.

'I can't wait to see her again.

'The Hope Centre has been where Grace has been staying

'until she has her final operation.

'Then she will be going back home.'

Bonsoir. Bonsoir

You look so different. I hardly recognise you.

You look great.

SHE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

She's so happy to see you again.

Yes! OK.

TRANSLATION: Before the surgery no-one wanted to be anywhere near me.

Now that's not the case. I can talk to anybody.

TRANSLATION: My mum is very, very happy.

The surgery has been amazing. It has changed my life.

It's opened so many doors and given me the chance to have a future.

Yes, so I'm leaving now. It was truly lovely to see you, Grace.

You look amazing.

I'll see you in December.

OK. December.

Oui, December. I have it right here.

-Goodbye.

-Bye.

Grace has dramatically improved.

She looks amazing

and I know that this surgery has really changed her life.

And Grace has touched my life, too.

I've made a new friend

and I'm sure I will make more new friends at our next destination.

Always moving on - that's the life on board the floating hospital.