Emmanuel was the first patient of the Global Mercy field service in Freetown
He had carried a growing tumour on his neck for four years. The operation that removed it took forty-eight minutes.
The gap between four years and forty-eight minutes is not medical. It is a question of whether surgery can be reached at all.
Headline
A tumour that kept growing
Emmanuel lived in Sierra Leone with a tumour on his neck that had been growing for four years. Tumours of this kind are not usually cancerous, but they do not stop. They press on the throat, they change how a person eats and sleeps, and they change how strangers respond in the street.
The first operation of the field service
When the Global Mercy docked in Freetown, Emmanuel was the first patient taken into the operating room. The maxillofacial team removed the tumour in forty-eight minutes.
Four years of waiting, undone in less than an hour. That distance is what Mercy Ships exists to close.