Spinal Injury Hospital

On Saturday we visited the Nairobi Spinal Injury Hospital. This was our third visit. We have been going as a group of interns from our department, but we are trying to get other people from the congregation involved.

The experience is really worth it. The first time we went there I was not looking forward to it. It felt like just another task that we had been given (under the assumption that we are not busy enough?). Secondly, we were not prepared or organised that day. When we got there, we talked to the nurses and some of the patients sitting outside. After that, the four of us went inside together, visited each room, introduced ourselves, talked with the patients for a while and then prayed for them. We had come to minister to the patients in some way, though we were not sure what that would look like, and we felt rather helpless and unprepared. We were surprised, therefore, when we realised that some of the patients were actually ministering to us and encouraging us!

Most of the patients stay there for many months or even years, so they get bored and lonely when their friends and families stop visiting. They are very eager and interested in anything new, so it has been easy to connect with them. We were surprised at our second visit how much it felt like seeing old friends. Some of them are able to be in a wheelchair, so we have been doing a time of fellowship outside for those, reading a passage from the Bible and discussing it with them. Then we go inside to visit those who cannot leave their beds.

This last Saturday we also got a team of people to come and do their hair and nails (for the ladies) and give them a shave (for the men). I was especially encouraged this time by a small thing that happened with a guy who had hardly spoken to us the other two times. This time he seemed eager to talk and asked us to bring him a Swahili Bible! Those little connections and the trust we are building by going there regularly make it worth it.

And the moral of the story is... no, seriously, here is another thing that I learned from my friends at Spinal Injury: pain is not necessarily bad. The patients at the hospital are actually happy to experience pain because it means something is happening to their nerves. Pain means that there is healing. Now that is deep!