Unexpected Sass

There is a patient on the Ward that I have taken to visiting. Her name is Bendu and she is also 24. she is a patient that I have seen for awhile, while each of my Adopt-A-Patients have come and gone.

Sidebar: My patients keep getting sent home. I must have some sort of undiagnosed healing power because after one visit most of my patients are ready for discharge. While visiting Alfred, a 3 month old cleft lip patient from Sierra Leone, I met David, a six year old maxillofacial patient who was just admitted that night. The next day I was told that Alfred had been sent home so I went and signed up for David. He had surgery that day and they decided he could be an outpatient case. So he was gone before I saw him again. But since I was already on the Ward I figured I should still play with someone. So I hung out with Yei a beautiful 17 year old girl. The next day I adopted Yei as my patient and spent the evening with her. But she was sent home after a few days - leaving me alone again.

Bendu is a "long term" patient on the Ward, meaning unlike our 2-5 days patients she will be there for awhile. So I've taken to going down to the Ward to see her and a few other longer termed patients like Joanna. These ladies are so much fun and there is always something new to discuss. Recently Bendu and I have taken up playing Uno together. She is extremely competitive and talks trash like a professional! So every evening I'm down there we play 3 or 4 games and she keeps track of who is winning. Well last night we could not find the Uno cards. Her exact words (translated from Liberian English) were "someone from A-Ward took them during the day and did not return them! I'm going to find them!". Then she stormed off out of B-Ward only to decide at the door that I needed to come with her. So she turned around, grabbed my arm, and proceeded to half-drag me to the next Ward. There she interrogated every patient looking for who had the cards. After I told her she needed to be nicer she told me to go wait for her on her bed!

After completing her unsuccessful interrogation she returned highly upset. I tried to tell her that we could just hang out but she wanted to win. Being around Bendu is always fun but is also a little difficult. She is a lot of fun and full of unexpected sass (seriously, if I call someone sassy you know they are). But it is also very hard to look at her and watch her function with her limited mobility. While reading over firelight Bendu burnt her head, entire face, and down the right side of her body including her arm, hand and fingers. Her heard is completely wrapped in gauze to protect her recent skin graphs. These will allow her to blink her eyelids - right now one eye lid is almost completely sealed shut while the right eye is open enough for her to make her way around.

Bendu has spirit! She is feisty and fierce, smart and sassy, lovely and full of personality. But looking at Bendu is often hard because her scars and burns are extreme and very grotesque. I continually have to remind myself that she is still there - that the exterior is damaged but she is still Bendu within. And I need to suck it up because she has to live everyday like this. The good thing is she is definitely living and full of life.

I want to leave you with the soft side of Bendu to counter the sass: she did eventually calm down and was distracted by the movie playing: Mary Poppins. We watched Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke dance to the chimney sweeper rooftop number "Step In Time". And in an instant she was transformed to a kid watching a movie. She ooh-ed and aah-ed at the dance sequence and I had to hold back laughing as she got more and more into the dancing. I asked her if she'd seen the movie before, because she was so impressed with it, and she said yes. This made me watch her watching Mary Poppins. She is amazing to watch - even when sassy!