Hi!
And
happy Saturday! I am enjoying afternoon tea. Thanks to all the international
volunteers who come from counties colonized by Britain and have influenced my
afternoons this way. It’s 4:45p, which is just about the time that we enjoy a
couple hours of down time. Usually I take this time to workout/circ-out, but
today my tum is bothering me, so I’ll just write to all of you!
Yesterday
was my last day actively volunteering in the hospital. It was definitely bitter-sweet. We observed a little boy have his elbow joint reconstructed due to a deformity in the humorus resulting from osteomyelitis.
*Quick
sidenote: there is a wedding van passing our apartments in the streets. How do
I know, you ask? Here in Tanzania the car carrying the newlyweds, decorated
with pink bows and ribbons, leads a line of cars going away from the church to
the reception. The car also includes a band of trumpets, making the new
marriage known to all those in the town. I remember when I first arrived in
Tanzania I saw this event for the first time on the way home from the airport
and shouted, “oh look, someone got a new car!” This is when everyone in the car
laughed and explained the above tradition.*
Okay,
where was I? Oh yeah. So this little boy had a portion of his humorus cut
and removed and two pins screwed in with a drill you’d see in your father's garage at home. They slapped on a cast and he was good to go.
OH
MY GOSH. How could I forget? I saw a leg amputation on Thursday y’all. Mind you
Wednesday night was karaoke night at Empire Sports Bar. This is a sports bar
that hands you an entire 1/5 of Konyagi when you ask for a Konyagi and Sprite.
This
fact alone should give you an idea of how our stomachs were feeling the morning
after. HOWEVER, nothing has ever stopped us from going into the hospital. We
arrived promptly at 9 a.m. excited to see what was on the roster for surgery
(below).
We
began the morning with a seven year old girl diagnosed with recurrent patellar
dislocations. The surgeon used a portion of a hamstring tendon to keep the
patella from dislocating laterally (he thread the tendon through a hole he had drilled through in the patella). He then slapped on some plaster and we walked
in O.R. 2.
We
weren’t entirely sure what this case was, so we checked the list. I ran my
finger down the roster… and there it was, “above the knee amputation.” I am not
sure I will ever again see someone lose a leg, but, WOW, was it interesting to
see the surgeon cut STRAIGHT through arteries, veins, nerves, tendons and
muscles in about 120 seconds.
Next?
Saw
the bone. Six minutes later… It was gone. The whole leg was carried away, and
put into a red bag for disposal. The time consuming part was the following
steps of suturing each vessel… femoral artery and vein, great and small
saphenous vein, deep femoral artery among a few others. I sat front row for
this. I was nearly 4 feet from the mans bloody nub. I couldn’t believe it! Not
once did I feel overwhelmed or lightheaded. Even the fact that the patient was
awake didn’t terrorize me.
Leaving
surgery that Thursday I felt on top of the world. I realized I had overcome ANY
fear I once had with blood.
As
I sit here and think about it I realize I have become so strong on this
venture. I have seen things I never thought I could handle. Emotional battles
of babies who have lost their mothers, young children suffering heart failure,
and the most recent event of a middle aged diabetic who lost his leg to a
gangrene infection.
It
may be true that body stops growing, physically,
by the end of puberty, but emotionally,
we never stop growing.
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