Today began with a really nice worship
service here at the hospital (they have it every day at 8 am, before patient
care starts around 8:30). Brother Julian
spoke on the Lord’s Prayer briefly and really gave a great message for those of
us who understand more than half of it ;-)
Then it was off to the races in the
clinic! Trying to finish up before Dr.
Iris Gamez, our anesthesiologist, was scheduled to arrive at “ten”. (She is notoriously late, even for Central
America, so we figured we had a few hours anyway!) Turns out that wasn’t as challenging as we
thought—there were only three patients waiting at the
time.
The first one was a 14 year old little
girl. I have no idea how they managed to
talk themselves in to a gynecology consult (she was here with her father), but
they had a note referring them to “a surgeon” for a mass under her tongue. Yep, that’s right. Her tongue.
As in, in her mouth. As in,
nowhere near her girl parts. No matter,
though, we’ll take a look, of course! It
looked to me like just a little inclusion cyst and I was really tempted to just
drain it with a needle. I tried to get
up with Tom to make sure I wasn’t missing some kind of crazy mess I could get
in to , but no answer.
So I ended up calling my dentist’s office
with almost definitely the most random question they’ve heard all day! If any of you are looking for a great dentist
in Greenville, try Earp and Gamboa!!!!
They have been so awesome with both me and Isaac, and Dr. Earp got on
the phone and said it sounded like something he would stick a needle in if she
were in his office. So with his
reassurance, we did just that and she left “cured”. For free, essentially. So it was a total blessing to be able to help
her, and her family was very grateful.
We then headed upstairs to operate, and had
a really nice result on the vaginal surgery.
The other patient didn’t show up, but we were able to get her on the
phone, clear up some miscommunication, and add her back on for tomorrow so no
worries.
The operating room was an absolute blast
today—You know I was totally in my element asking the medical students a
billion questions and getting them up to speed on hysterectomies so they can
each (hopefully) DO one abdominally tomorrow!
Maria and Judy were our group photographers, and you have them to thank
for the pictures below. First is the little girl with the mouth cyst mentioned above. Many thanks to Carol for holding the flashlight for me!
THEN we have the obligatory group uterus pictures... our regular readers are used to these by now! The three of us who were scrubbed right after we got the uterus out...
Then the whole group posing with the offending organ post-operatively! I love my growing collection of this particular group picture...
Please pray for Juana to have a speedy
recovery, and say an extra prayer of thanks for a smooth day today. It is a beautiful afternoon that we are now
enjoying on the roof of the apartment.
Time to go get some reading done (I think I scared the girls in to
studying hysterectomies for the rest of the night now!) and maybe stroll around
town a bit before dinner.
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