Day Two in the OR

So Day Two in the OR, Day Three in the clinic today, and all is still well.  We are thankful that both Chris and I continue with good health and good energy levels, as there is still plenty of work to be done!  All four of our operative patients from yesterday looked great today, including the one that we lost nearly a liter of blood on.  We were thankful that she started out with a great hemoglobin, so today she was still doing well and it doesn’t look like she will need a blood transfusion.

That is a particularly good thing, since both Chris and I gave a bag of blood each to a lady who DOES need probably at least four bags!  We are giving three of them tonight BEFORE her surgery tomorrow, to remove the uterus that is causing her to bleed to these levels!  She saw the local gynecologist who works at the hospital a little over a month ago for the same problem.  Her hemoglobin was just as low then, but he recommended that she wait and see us since she could not afford to pay him to operate on her.  Sigh. 

I understand that everyone is not a missionary, and that everyone has bills to pay.  But he could have at least sent her to the government hospital to try to get her surgery sooner at a hemoglobin that low!  Or had her get blood donated and transfused in the meantime!  That would not have cost him anything but a little bit more time to explain and write an order.  But some folks just aren’t interested.

On a brighter note, we sent two ladies home today looking great on post-op day one, which was definitely a plus since we don’t have many more beds here!  Tom has some anesthesiology friends from back home that got in this afternoon, so we are planning to run two ORs tomorrow and we are filled up with cases in both—it’s a lot of patients and not a lot of hospital!  We will continue to pray that everyone does well and can go home on time or early this week.

Clinic has remained interesting.  Today we added yet another abdominal hysterectomy on for tomorrow, for a grand total of five of those this week.  We’ve seen the usual variety of belly aches, cysts, and a scattered pregnancy or two—plus a lady today who has pain only when she worries about things (yep, you guessed it—diagnosis is depression/anxiety), a lady who cried with relief when we told her the lump she has in her breast that she waited 14 months to seek care for is almost definitely NOT breast cancer (but we will definitely take care of it with Tom’s help!), and a lady whose prolapsed lady parts we fixed back in July but who now says her feet swell when she tries to walk very far—only since the surgery, of course.  What do you say to that—“sorry we fixed your vagina, but broke your feet?”

Anyway, tomorrow will be another long day in the OR with three major abdominal cases and a minor procedure to do, plus some return patients in clinic or referrals.   Hopefully we will get out to Canillá on Thursday. 

We will leave you with some pictures that we had to have the circulating nurse take in the OR, plus one of Chris braving the HUGE needle used for blood donation here in the ER!