an update on Betty. wow.

Sometimes getting woken up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning is awesome.

Just a half an hour ago I was lying in bed, pondering life (okay, so technically I was already awake. sad, I know) when my cell phone rang. I hopped out of bed and picked it up. It was Betty.

Betty was my second adopted patient on board the Africa Mercy. (see my post about Betty) She was a 21 year old girl in for a VVF repair (see my post about VVF) who had been leaking for 3 years. Before Betty had left the ship we exchanged phone numbers. I told her I would call her after I got back to the US. But since as many of you know I am in the running for World's Wort Pen Pal, I haven't called her yet.

Well, this morning Betty called me. It took me a while to realize who was on the other end when I picked up, but once I recognized her voice I couldn't contain my excitement. I asked her how her surgery went, and she responded "If you call me back I will tell you." (smart girl) So I rephrased the question, saying "Betty, are you dry??" (meaning, 'was your surgery successful?'), she promptly replied "Yyyyessss!", and we both said "PRAISE GOD!"

See, I had told her last October that she should call me after she had her third-attempt VVF repair so that she could tell me she was dry and I could say "Praise God!" with her.

Amazing.

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Isaiah 35
Joy of the Redeemed
The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the LORD,
the splendor of our God.

Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
"Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you."

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
The burning sand will become a pool,
the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
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and the ransomed of the LORD will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

nicknamed. the saga continues.

So I was back at youth night tonight. Half the kids are still calling me chronic. The others are trying to get me to adopt a new nickname: "Dody." Having learned my lesson, I refused their Dody advances. After our meeting, Booboo pried "whyyyyy won't you let us call you dody??" I told her I'd tell her next week. I knew that I needed to look up the term on urbandictionary.com, my new favorite online resource.

Just as I suspected:
1. dody: weed; marajuana; pot; lye
i.e. where da dody at?
pass dat dody.
wanna buy sum dody?
2. dody: a show of extreme slowness in mental capacity.
i.e. how dody is that...?


Herein lies the dilemma: the kids refuse to call me Marla, they have rejected all of my pre-approved suggestions, and all of their names ideas are actually illegal substances. Does anyone have any suggestions? They've already shot-down the following:

1. Marz Barz
2. Mar
3. Doc
4. Stumpie
5. stumpAH (actually, when I mentioned this one they all started to laugh and said "no! that sounds like a white rapper's name!" I bit my tongue.)

Any/all ideas are welcomed. Please run your suggestions through urbandictionary.com to screen for drug and/or sexually explicit references.

Chronic

So I've started helping out with the jr/sr high youth group at my church in South Phoenix. Tonight was my second time, and I'm still trying to get 'in' with the kids. Upon hanging out with a bunch of the kids who happen to be nick-named after popular candies, 'Skittles' told me that I was not allowed to be named Marz Barz because that's a chocolate name and I'm not black. Instead they dubbed me "Chronic" allegedly after an energy drink.

I later learned that chronic is a slang term for pot.

Boomerang Child

...So yeah, I'm slightly embarrassed that I haven't updated my blog in about a month and a half. Motivation is low because I feel like Gilbert isn't quite as interesting or noteworthy as Liberia. But that's a bad attitude; there are events-a-plenty around here.

After 5 days in the Canary Islands and 3 days in London, I headed back to AZ via a direct flight on British Airways. (direct flight=super exciting) And then, I entered what I now refer to as The Time Warp. I slept a lot and then got sick and slept even more and then it was Christmas and then I went to the East Coast to visit friends and then I started to take a class and continue the med school application process and look into some other graduate schools and now I'm here. Really I can't believe I left the ship over a month ago. I've gotten to reconnect with several Mercy Ships friends state-side, which has been such a blessing!

I'm going to sift through my thousands of pictures from last fall (no joke) to find some fun Canaries and London shots for da blog. So stay tuned...

8 Random Facts; Reflections from the Home Front

So I've only got 8 more days until I leave for Africa! I've been in AZ for just over a week now, and my time at home has been good. I've really enjoyed spending quality time with the fam, not needing quarters to do laundry, going to siblings' volleyball games and swimming meets, depleting the family cereal supply, etc. My parents and sisters leave me home alone and car-less during the day while they're at school and work. This can get a bit lonely, but it gives me ample time for reflection and medical school applications. And Abby, the zany family Golden Doodle, keeps me company.

A while back I was blog-tagged by my friend Katie, and I'm just now responding. (in typical Marla-style!) As one who has been tagged I am supposed to post 8 random facts about myself. I am also supposed to tag 8 others to do the same, but I have always been a rather non-aggressive tag-player and so the buck stops here. Unless of course you want to be tagged, then by all means let me know and I'd be happy to oblige. (I realize the likelihood of this is very low. I mean, who ever hands him/herself over to be tagged? Unless, of course, he/she is super fast and is tired of the really really slow kid being "it." I digress.) Without further adieu, here are some little-known facts:

1. I weighed 10 lb 10 oz when I was born. My doctor referred to me as a "horse," and according to my father I had no face but rather a big wrinkle where one's face should be.
2. My parents almost named me Nina.
3. In my lifetime I have parented 9 hamsters, and the saga of their lives closely parallels a Greek tragedy. I can provide more details upon request, but the history includes inexplicable deaths, incest, inter-familial conflict and murder.
4. I am a professional balloon twister.
5. I can wiggle my ears, cross my eyes, triple-curl my tongue, do weird things with my shoulder blades and dislocate my right hip, and I have double-jointed elbows and thumbs.
6. Though I try and try, I simply cannot raise one eyebrow at a time.
7. My most embarrassing moment involved me hanging upside-down on a climbing wall 15 ft off the ground suspended only by my sweat-pants in front of a sizable crowd of strangers, my sisters and my former employer.
8. For a long time it was my life ambition to be Belle at Disneyland. In fact, the desire played a significant role in my almost attending college at ASU. In choosing to go to Penn in Philly I sacrificed the possibility of attending character auditions each March and thus retired my Disney dreams. Oh, the decisions that can change a life...