Thursday, August 23, 2012

Last Morning in the Hospital

Thursday morning we woke up and caught the first shuttle to the hospital.  Chelsea, Allison, and I went straight up to major theatre to see if we could observe some surgeries.  On Thursdays and Fridays there are usually specialists who come from other parts of the world.  When we first got there we suited up in the surgical boots, hair net, and mask and went into one of the operating rooms.  The first surgery we observed was a man who was undergoing esophageal surgery.  He had cancer and they were going to try and remove it.  At first they went through his abdomen but they couldn’t get to the cancer so they had to sew him back up and go through his side.  I felt badly for the patient today. They get taken to the operating room, and no doctors talk to them or try to comfort them as they are being pricked with iv’s and needles. It made me think back to when I had my appendix removed and how scared I was before I was put under.  I couldn’t imagine the way the patient felt facing cancer, but also about to have a major surgery.  My heart ached for him.

                                                          Allison and I-ready for surgery

Next, I went and saw an orthopedic surgery and let me tell you it was halfway disturbing.  The man had broken his femur and the doctors were manipulating his body, legs twisting everywhere trying to get the bone back into place.  The nurse joked that the doctors didn’t need to work out for the rest of the day because they literally had to put their full body weight into what they were doing.  It was slightly gross but actually really cool the way that they can fix bones like that.  The doctors performing the surgery were from Germany and none of the drills in the theatre were working.  The doctor said he brought one with him that they could use and when he pulled it out I wanted to laugh.  It looked exactly like a Makita drill that my dad uses for construction.  He assured us that it was special for surgery and he put a cloth casing over it and continued to use it.  It took three doctors to correctly set the femur but the leg looked straight as they were closing up.
                                             fixing the broken femur
After being up in surgery I made my way back down to minor theatre.  I did a couple dressings when one of the students from our group, Chris, came and told us there was someone in casualty we had to see.  We made our way over to casualty and it was a woman who had been in a massacre a day ago.  I have never, ever seen anything like it.  As I sit here trying to describe to you what I saw I’m at a loss for words.  The lady had been severely cut on her cheek so that you could see her teeth and upper jaw bone through the skin.  Her arm was mangled and looked like the tendons were barely hanging on.  The amazing thing was that the massacre happened very far away from Mombasa, and she was found in a town halfway between Mombasa and where the massacre had happened.  The massacre was all over the papers and it was a tribal battle over some pasture land.  A lot of women and children were killed but only 8 men.  I couldn’t believe that innocent people were being killed over some swamp land.  What amazed me even more was the woman’s resiliency.  Her whole family had been killed and she was badly injured yet she wasn’t screaming in pain or making a commotion.  As we left to go to lunch the doctors were taking her up to surgery. 

                                             The newspaper article on the massacre

After lunch we made our way to Old Town to do some last minute shopping.  I got some souvenirs for friends and family as well as myself.  It was fun to shop but the store owners are so frustrating sometimes.  They really pressure you to buy things and sometimes just go too far.  I was ready to leave after a couple hours.  Now we are back at the compound and are preparing our last celebration here at the compound.  We are planning on having a good time tonight with all the other students for our one last hoorah.  It’s a sad realization that today was our last morning hospital visit.  Tomorrow we are working on painting the orphanage and then we are going to try to do a night shift so we are tired for the plane ride.  I can’t wait to see everyone but it will be hard leaving this place, quite bittersweet in my opinion. 
                                                Angie, Natalie, and I with our henna (picture from yestertday)

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