Women's Team Day 1 (or so)

Today was the first day in the operating rooms for the team from Texas Women's Hospital (and MD Anderson and Ben Taub). They did several cases, almost all of which went completely without a hitch. The last case of the day was a little different. The good news is that we have GYN oncologist on the team. The bad news is that the patient needed her. It was supposed to be a relatively simple surgery, but when she got opened up, she had something that looked suspiciously like cancer. Luckily, Dr. Jubilee Brown is on the team. She is a cancer specialist from MD Anderson, one of the top cancer hospitals in the world. So, in a way, this patient lucked out (if you can ever consider yourself lucky with possible cancer).




On another front, this team has been FABULOUS so far! We took six of them out to San Andres with us yesterday and had a wonderful teaching experience. Since we usually have over 80 patients there, it's not usually the best place to do teaching (at least from a time perspective). Since we had three extra physicians, we had extra time to learn a lot from several experienced OB/GYNs.



Last night, Hannah Ficker called with some disturbing news. A woman had shown up at their house in labor but with a dead baby. And it was stuck with a foot hanging out. So Heidi had to talk them through the delivery - there were some more advanced techniques involved. This was the 9th delivery for this patient but she only has three living children. We didn't ask 1,000 questions, since she clearly wasn't having the best day anyway, but she's obviously had a pretty tough life. Leslie said she didn't cry, didn't scream, didn't complain, or anything, but at the end of the entire ordeal, simply asked if she could go home. They gave her a ride home (which she hadn't asked for), then she wanted to know how much she owed them. No matter how smart we are, we still have a lot to learn - and the people here could sure teach us.


Anyway, back to the team at our house. They have had the best attitudes about everything. A few minor glitches have come up (like Continental losing two of their bags and not being very cooperative about getting them here - looks like their 24 hour promise doesn't hold much water) but there have been no complaints. They are improvising and making due like true professionals. Of course, Gensha's cooking helps with all of that!

Oh, and our clothes dryer finally died today. It's been trying to die for some time, but today the drum finally froze. The bad news was that some of our clothes got melted. The worse news is that Heidi only has a few pairs of pants that still fit and now she has one fewer.

And Martin got to do us another favor today. Since we had such a great response to our offer to go to clinic yesterday, we had to take both trucks. The hood latch on the green truck didn't survive the trip. So Martin got to help us fix that today. It really only took him about 20 minutes and he refused to charge us, but we did find out that we might be able to finally return a favor. His mother-in-law is in need of a surgery but is, at the moment, too scared to get it. So we've offered to help her out with that if she ever changes her mind.

We've taken a few pictures, but since we've gotten complaints in the past from our friends with weak stomachs, we'll only post the boring ones. Which leaves us with two. The first is of Goran and his wife, Dr. Jubilee Brown, and Jake. That cat is the most spoiled creature on the planet. It was Goran's birthday (18 again) and we had three cakes to celebrate - sounds about right, huh?


The second is of Dr. Chavez and Dr. Brown in one of their cases. None of the good pics will make it to the blog, but we have some!!