Thursday, May 12, 2011

May 2011 - Day 4/5 - Post by Dr. Chris DeLuca - "It's Not a Tumor"

Or at least not a cancerous one probably... YAY! So good morning! Yay for God because the surgery we were worried might be cancer WASN'T! (At least I am about 99% syre pre-pathology results... and speaking of pathology results, anyone else ever seen an olive jar double as a specimen container? Love missionary medicine!) So did 5 cases yesterday, 2 of our own and 3 where I got to play general surgeon with Dr. Hoak (kinda fun!) One non-surgical consult only i the AM... apparently Mother's Day was yesterday in Guatemala and nobody fancied a pap for Mother's Day... crazy I know! ;-) All 3 of our post-op patients are doing very well... it remains to be seen how successful Tomasa's prolapse repair will be seen (may not know until well after we are gone) but we are still praying hard. We did decide NOT to reoperate... just trusting Him. Our first case was a nice mini-lap ovarian cystectomy that ended up being a little dermoid (cool but gross cyst with hair in it) so the correct call there. The one we were worried about, Manuela, appears to just have a HUGE cervical firboid that parasitized some nutrition from the uterine arteries. It was kind of a cool case, we got in to a MILDLY enlarged uterus sitting on top of a softball! Thankfully, the softball acted nothing like cancer... rest of the belly seemed benign, shelled out pretty easily once we took care of the blood supply... praise God for the gift of Dr. Tom Hoak who came down and dissected out our ureters and protected them from harms way after me a Heidi spent about 30 minutes trying to channel Dr Semer and dig them out... *lol* He was AWESOME! Enjoyed working with Him a lot! He is a great teacher and if God ever tells him he is done over here, he should ceratinly teach somewhere! Anyway, did lose a lot of blood, but by the grace of God, she is tolerating her anemia WONDERFULLY and should do great! I also did 3 cases with Dr Hoak.... a femoral and inguinal hernia repair (short and sweet) and an open cholecystectomy that ended up being a common bile duct resection and sphincteroplasty... something I'd never get to see at home... pretty cool!



So a good day yesterday, but another long one... been so happy for God's provision and grace, even if my feet and back are a bit sore! :-) Today whatever comes in we will see, will be our last consulta day and we'll have to see if anything surgical shows up. I know that Tom has 3 or 4 cases on the schedule so if there aren't Gyn patients, we may just help him out some. Tomorrow we will leave for Canilla to spend time with the Fickers, missionary friends of Heidi who I thoroughly enjoyed meeting my first trip here. We will probably do a clinic with them Friday then back to the States Saturday! This trip seems to be going by quickly... good and bad. Good because I certainly miss being around the people I love in the States, but bad because I truly enjoy it here when I come. Praying today for his favor and continued good recovery for our patients. Pray that we wouldn't miss opportunities to help these people, physically or spiritually! Thanks for the prayer! We can CERTAINLY feel it here! This doesn't work without it! Have a great day guys and God bless!!



Chris

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