Day Three of Creative Blog Titles

So today started off a little slowly since we all stayed up until nearly midnight talking, giggling, sharing testimonies, sharing stories of cool things that God has done in our lives and the lives of others we know, and getting to know each other better!  So once we finally made it down to the hospital it was already 8:00 and we went straight up to round on the ladies from yesterday.  They both looked quite a bit better after a good night's rest (they don't get woken up nearly as often by the nursing or loud hospital noises here as they do at home).  They should be able to go home tomorrow to continue recovering and being taken care of by quite loving families.

Marta was our surgical patient today, and we did a really great abdominal hysterectomy.  The really fun part was that our entire team participated (with the slight exception of little Eli).  Tia got started with Elliott while Sarah and I finished with the patient down in clinic (see the story below).  Then Sarah and I went up to help.  When I got up there, we did our pre-operative prayer (that's pretty much what we do in place of the "time-out" here), and I think my very favorite part of the day was when the patient started praying with us!  (Almost all of our surgeries here are done under local or regional anesthetics instead of with the patient asleep since it is much safer and easier to control).

Mitzi was also scrubbed in with us, so we made sure she got to help us take the uterus out at after we made the skin incision.  She was then gracious enough to scrub out and go relieve Beth from caring for Eli and believe it or not, we got her scrubbed in to the surgery!  Sarah was also gracious enough to scrub out and walk her through the process of scrubbing in (that's just the kind of team I'm working with this week, folks!) after the major parts of the hysterectomy were completed by her and Elliott. Tia did a great and very patient job teaching the two medical students through the hysterectomy, and then Beth got the very rare privilege of being scrubbed in to a surgery with her husband.  Also a great photo op, of course!  Then we started to be in danger of our anesthesia wearing off, so Tia and I got to operate very quickly through the last few steps.  I can't deny that it was good to actually have an excuse to get my hands dirty for a second, too ;-)

Our second patient in clinic this morning (who we also took in just before they were upstairs trying to get Marta's anesthesia going for her case… of course!) was a particularly sad one and the one that needs the most prayer.  Josefa is a 76 year old woman who came in with some of her adult grandchildren looking very sickly.  She is in a Catholic church and says she knows and has accepted Christ.  This is important, and something that I really hope she is right about since she has a large cervical cancer tumor  that is inoperable.  She really is already quite sick from it, and we don't suspect she has much longer here on this earth.  While Tia and Elliott went up to get started in the OR, Sarah and I had the privilege of talking, praying-- and inevitably crying-- with her and her family before they left with our well wishes, promises to pray more, and pain medication.  Those are the harder days on the job, but God is still in them giving us chances to glorify Him!

Time for some photo ops:

This is me (Heidi) letting the family know that the surgery went well for their family member.  I have the removed uterus in my hand to show them, kind of like asking to see the old parts from the car mechanic in the U.S.!

Tia and Elliott doing a vaginal case, with Beth looking on and me doing my best to supervise!

One of our favorites from the week… taken from the doorway of the OR, where little Eli is watching Daddy operate!!  What a gift to treasure in coming years, right?!

Elliott practicing his best "disapproving attending look" for years to come!! (Or maybe just waiting for someone to help him get his glasses back up his nose; I'll never tell…)

Sarah and Elliott doing their first abdominal hysterectomy!  Under excellent supervision, of course… 

Beth and Elliott operating together for the first and only time to date!  I couldn't resist throwing them in there to take this picture to treasure either.  Don't worry, you can see Tia still supervising from the right and I'm standing really just behind Elliott where you can't see me.  And we had them cut a suture.  Literally.  Cut this string here.  But it was still cool!  And safe.