This morning it seemed like everyone was pretty tired; we were all slow to get our start to the day. At Morning Handover, we found out that the woman pregnant with triplets was in labor! I spent my morning in the OPD (Out Patient Department) with Dr. Abel, diagnosing and then following the proper plan of action for patients visiting with ailments. It is pretty monotonous work, the patient comes in, and we review their history. Luckily, the nurse takes a patient history before they get to us, or it would take even longer. Then we start asking questions about why they’re here and what symptoms they have. It can be very difficult at times, because the nurses tend to ask closed ended questions when they translate for Dr. Abel, even when he asks open-ended questions. People here don’t have the same concept of time as we do, and they don’t really think in a stepwise fashion. It’s very strange. If you ask a patient if they’ve been sick for four days, they most of the time say yes. If you follow that question asking if they’ve been sick for three days, they will say yes. If you ask how long they’ve been sick, they look at you blankly. They also need a little lesson in cause and effect. One woman couldn’t tell us how her ribs were injured, but when asked if she’s fallen recently she said, “well, I did fall off a bridge…” Um, OF COURSE your ribs hurt! You fell off a bridge!
Another woman didn’t want a pregnancy test because she knew she was pregnant and that the baby wasn’t her husband’s, and another family refused to even be tested for blood type matches to their sick family member who needed a blood transfusion to live! Luckily there was blood in the blood bank for him, so he got treatment, but it’s amazing that people find blood testing and donating blood so scary that they wont even do it to save a family member.
At around 11h00, I went to have my lunch because I knew the day was packed full of surgeries and wanted to eat before they started so I didn’t miss anything. After lunch, I went to the theatre and found that they’d already started, which is unusual. They don’t normally start on time. They were performing a full hysterectomy on a forty-year-old woman who had a mola pregnancy. A mola pregnancy occurs when an unfertilized egg becomes cancerous and starts dividing. It can be very serious, and it’s less risk to do a hysterectomy hand try and clean it if the woman is older and already has children. After the uterus was removed, Dr. Erdi cut it open for us! I have some really cool pictures. Well, cool for me…
After that surgery, Dr. Erdi wanted to see if we, meaning Tanis, Elizabeth, her and I, could do a couple minor surgeries on our own. Yikes! We ended up doing just fine though, I was the anesthetist all by myself!! For TWO procedures! I had to keep track of vitals and write them down every five minutes, and even administer drugs! Tanis scrubbed in on one, and Elizabeth on the other, and I got to do all the drug stuff, so it worked out great!
Between the two procedures, Marcel asked Dr. Erdi to come out and see a child that was a rare case. An infant that was born yesterday at home was delivered with a massive tumor of some kind that seems to come from the base of the spine. The pictures are unbelievable. Dr. Erdi has seen one case like this before, and when she operated on that patient he died. Dr. Erdi made sure to explain to the family that the child is sick, and isn’t possessed by the devil or a witch, which is commonly thought of people with strange illnesses. She told the mother that neither she nor the child did anything wrong, and that it’s a good baby, it just got sick. She is going to consult with a doctor in Freetown, and if he can’t do it, we will try to remove the tumor. The baby is so cute, I hope she makes it!
After a quick break, I went back to watch a bowel resection. We were going to have two more surgeries today, by Dr. ABD and Dr. Erdi where beat, and there were still a lot of patients waiting to be seen in the OPD by Dr. ABD or to be scanned by Dr. Erdi, so we decided to do them tomorrow.
After some reading, we had a great dinner. More fruit, which is very good here. Now it’s pouring rain, which will be nice for sleeping tonight!
This post is dedicated to the little baby girl with the tumor. Pray that she makes it.
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