Scrubbed up and ready to go....

ya, I actually got a picture in the OR :/

Hernia repair or tubes tied not sure? haha

concent forms here-fingerprints?

Wow, what a day today!! Being in the operating room was quite an encounter. The doctor preformed 6 surgeries in 5 hours, and they were one after the other and he still had 2 more to do before 2pm

The First surgery was on a one-week year old, the little girl could breast feed because part of her tongue was attached to her roof of her mouth. The doctor tried putting her under anesthesia and it didn’t work so he preformed the surgery with no painkillers, the baby was crying away. Let me tell you how hard it is to cut a babies tongue and keep her mouth open while crying. I had to hold the baby’s mouth open, another had to hold her arms and another had to widen her mouth while the doctor cut. That was truly hard to stand through without shedding a tear. But thankfully it only took 30 minutes and I was happy to wrap her back up in her blanket and give her back to her mom.

Roberts arm :( you can see why he was in pain

The next surgery was about 5 minutes later with a 10-year-old boy named Robert! This boy has been in a few of my pictures in previous blog’s. He has just stolen my heart from the moment he smiled at me; he is the taller boy with the baseball cap on. He is so sweet, and friendly, I am so happy he has a loving father because I would want to take him home with me. Anyways, he had a snakebite a while back and had a procedure where they open up his arm to reduce the swelling and take out the venom, now the doctor was stitching him back up weeks later. First off they gave him some painkillers to kind of knock him out, well the next thing you know is his toes and legs are cringing at the pain as they were sticking a needle through his arm sowing him up. I asked the doctor if he could have some more pain meds, apparently in Zambia sucking up the pain is the way to go. I could see his blood pressure go up and heart rate rise and I was just getting sick watching this boy go through this. So finally he got more drugs and he kind of fell asleep, but his toes were still flexing and a one point a tear rolled down his face, and I just wiped it away, I wanted to hold his hand the entire time, my heart was breaking! After about an hour they were down and we rolled him back to the pediatric ward. Hours later I went to go check on him, Robert was sweating, he felt hot and he was in so much pain. I asked one of the nurses if he had any pain medications yet, they replied no. I made it my job to find him some, I wrote on his chart his temperature, my assessment and what pain medications he should get. Then I went and got him Panadol, which isn’t that strong considering his surgery. I wiped off his sweaty face and elevated his poor arm. At this moment I had to be his advocate, he couldn’t speak English and in their culture they just endure everything. I told the father “if he has a fever tell the nurse, if he is in pain tell the nurse.” We need to watch for infection, which is very common after surgery here; this boy was one heck of a trooper.

The next 3 surgeries were women getting their tubes tied. All 3 women had 10 kids each, they were all about 45-50, just shocking at the age women still have kids. We were making jokes saying these women and their kids could be an entire village, the doctor forced these women to get this procedure done, he said 10 is enough ha-ha! What I love about this doctor is he prays before each surgery, and also there is a short gospel message on the loud speaker every morning, being at a Christian hospital is a privilege and I will miss it when I come back home!

The doctor also did a hernia repair and the anesthesia did not work, and here the doctor is digging around in this lady insides and she is just screaming (which I have never really herd from a women in pain yet) and I could not believe he carried on with the surgery, you know it had to hurt like the dickens. You would never see that in America, EVER, God bless them.

Harry and I on our run (well run/walk)

making lemonade-very proud of ourselves

That was about the extent of my morning, keeping sterile is not as strict here and I was aloud to help and stand close and watch, and they wonder why the infection rate is so high ha-ha I wonder why. Later, in the afternoon Harriet and I made our first lemonade from fresh squeezed lemons, which we were very proud of, it was delicious. Then after we went for a run on the airstrip, which is about a mile long. Try running in long skirts, on sand, in 80-degree sun, where the altitude is very high. Lets just say we weren’t running very fast and were really out of breath. That was the first time we worked out the entire time we have been here. We are going to try and make it a regular daily activity. I made a joke to the doctor asking if he would do lipo suction on me before I leave and he laughed and said exercise and don’t eat so much. That is easier said then done when you eat as much as we do. Then we met a 23 year old school teacher on our walk back home who invited us for lunch tomorrow, lets hope it isn’t shima. Her name is Gin and was very friendly; making friends here is so easy. The locals love white people; they call us chandelles (sp?) Later that evening we went to the market to buy food and just relaxed the rest of the right. We are both very happy tomorrow is the end of the workweek, getting up at 6 is not fun! Well I am off, I wrote a whole lot tonight, sorry, but I also have some pictures, which I know everyone loves, till tomorrow!

caterpillars-eww

A little boy, eating caterpillars like peanuts. You get them  in bags and then un-peal them and then eat them, no thanks

try running on this with a skirt on

our new friend, Gin! She loved my phone and that we could take pic ourselves