VGH nurses find each other through love of volunteering
Brian Drebert, Erin Davis are continuing their work as a couple
Feeling restless in his job, Vancouver nurse Brian Drebert boarded a “mercy ship” three years ago as a volunteer helping to heal the forgotten poor in the West African country of Guinea.
“I just really wanted some changes in my life,” said the 36-year-old Winnipeg native, who works at Vancouver General Hospital. “I found a real joy in working with the patients there. They are such a loving people.”
About five years ago, in an unrelated adventure, Erin Davis, a 35-year-old VGH nurse from Smithers, signed on to volunteer with Team Serve Canada for a six-week stint as a volunteer in a rural hospital in Zimbabwe.
Like Drebert, she was smitten with the whole African nursing experience. She loved the Zimbabwean nurses and doctors, the volunteers like herself, the patients and the excitement of discovering a foreign country.
After Drebert’s return, the two began running into each other at VGH. They vaguely remembered each other from their student days at Trinity Western University, but it was their love of nursing in Africa that really drew them together.
Now, the married couple are about to embark on a journey of a lifetime. On Saturday, they will leave for a three-month stint as volunteer nurses on board a floating hospital with an international faith-based charity called Mercy Ships which has an operations centre in Texas and national offices in 16 countries, including one in Victoria.
They will be docked in Madagascar, an island country off the southeast coast of Africa. Aptly, it is here they will celebrate their first wedding anniversary.
Over tea in the South Granville area where they rent an apartment, the couple took time from their travel preparations to share their passion for nursing in this challenging part of the world, their love for each other and their hopes and dreams.
They know that what they are about to experience won’t always be pretty. It will be taxing even for these two who are used to dealing with life-and-death situations: she in the cardiac unit at VGH and he in the intensive care unit. From their separate stations, the two sometimes meet on the Code Blue team that handles medical emergencies like cardiac arrests in the hospital.
A big part of their work will be to deal with facial deformations including cleft palates in youth, the removal of large tumours in adults and corrective surgery for an African disease called noma that can eat off parts of the face.
Patients can show up missing a cheek or nose. In their place is just a gaping hole.
Outcasts in their communities and sometimes within their own families, superstition often prevents them from getting a job, going to school or a cab ride.
After his first couple of days witnessing such horrors in Guinea, “I just wanted to find a closet to go cry in because I was so emotionally affected by seeing all this,” said Drebert.
But then he saw how corrective surgery restored their lives.
“It’s not like we’re only healing their face; we are healing their soul, too.”
He witnessed a beautiful transformation. “They come on the ship as an outcast, not talking, not making eye contact. By the time they leave, they are dancing with us and playing games and laughing.”
Added Davis, “I think it’s pretty powerful for them to be treated like a human being, to be loved even in that state where they felt they were so unloved.”
A big part of the journey is becoming part of a dedicated international community of volunteers, of going to the market with new friends and of living on a ship with your patients who can you visit any time. Being freed from domestic tasks like cooking, shopping for groceries and cleaning, there is time to sit on deck and play the guitar, keep a journal or spend an evening volunteering at the children’s hospital on land.
For some of those inland trips, the couple have bought cheap bikes on Craigslist that they will leave behind.
Because they will be forgoing their salaries, they have accepted some donations to cover basic expenses. While Davis was reluctant at first to accept, Drebert has found that the generosity has made them feel they have the support of others who will be part of their journey.
“They believed in us and they sent us on this journey to do this hospital work and I don’t want to disappoint them.”
VGH has granted them leaves of absence, ensuring their jobs will be there when they return. Added Drebert, “In that sense, it feels like work is standing behind us as well.”
“They come on the ship as an outcast, not talking, not making eye contact. By the time they leave, they are dancing with us and playing games and laughing.
BRIAN DREBERT
VANCOUVER NURSE