Weds 10/26 - What better way to start off the morning than a 30min Zumba class with Yolanda! Meg, JillRae, and I met her out on the lawn by the guest house which has a beautiful view of the city and immediately started dancing to Pit Bull. To say that the Malagasy people were confused by our actions were an understatement. I tried to wave in a couple girls to join but they preferred to stare at the crazy white girls attempting to imitate a trained Hispanic dancer.
After our little exercise routine, we quickly changed and met the group at the dispensary for morning devotion. Every morning at 7:10am there is a morning service led by the pastor where the Malagasy people sing hymns and share the gospel. Unfortunately we didn't have a translator so instead Jill made friends with a family and started reading alongside of them. She reported back to the group that the pastor was reading Acts 16... the same passage that we started out trip with! He read the whole chapter, including Lydia and her purple goods, which has become a symbol of the trip. This is just one of many "God things" that confirms we are supposed to be here.
Our clinic today was just west outside of Antsirabe in a small drive-thru town. It looked like one of the many towns we roar through on our way to get to a destination so it was nice to actually stop of meet the locals.
I was paired up with John (ER PA) today in our tiny 1 room house. We have been spoiled the past couple of days with these large churches! Now we are back to reality... so the nurses and providers were in this one tiny house and then the pharmacy was set up down the road in another small house. Our group is amazing though and not a single person complained about the new environment. We are here to serve and therefore we adapt to whatever situation we are given.
We saw around 400 patients today in our half day clinic and are starting to run out of medications in the pharmacy! Hopefully we have more back at the hospital to use for the next couple of days....
Megan was a rockstar today and was working with Yolanda (Ortho PA) so she took the Polaroid camera and was giving out polaroids to all of the patients. After we finished seeing patients the madness erupted... a true Polaroid frenzy occurred midway between the doctors area and the pharmacy. I stopped to take a picture of a family in their street side farmers market and next thing I know I was surrounded by 20+ children all vying for the next magic picture to come out of the camera! After a roll and a half of film I attempted my escape from mayhem and instead became the pide piper with children blindly crossing the street to get to the camera. Apparently this is not the best idea since it is "one of those drive-thru towns" and if any child got hurt crossing the street I would be liable to pay all the medical bills soooo the Polaroid camera went away bc my debt doesn't need any extra help growing!
We packed up the pharmacy and headed back to town. The rest of the afternoon was free time so some people went shopping while others took naps. I was planning on taking a nap (these are longgg tiring days) but instead Yolanda burst into our room and said there were 2 surgeries about to go on! Meg and I quickly changed into our scrubs and ran to the OR.
The first surgery was a high risk neonate surgery so we all watched while 3 surgeons operated on a 4 day old boy born without an anus. He presented today with a HUGE distended belly because he has been eating for 4 days but unable to pass stool. The doctors were very worried since it was a high risk surgery but the plan was to create a loop colostomy that could be reversed in 3yrs. However when Dr Harison opened the belly, he found the cecum and appendix in the LUQ instead of RLQ indicating the baby also has a malrotation. So Dr Harison closed his initial incision and made a new one of the right side to hopefully find the transverse colon. Instead he found no colon at all... after more digging around, he discovered the baby only had a cecum (the first part of the colon) and the rest had not developed. It was a very distended blind pouch. The surgeons were able to make the loop ostomy but this baby is not out of the woods yet. There are so many complications that can occur with ostomies, especially in 3rd / 4th world countries, but even in the USA, the baby would need to be carefully followed for nutritional deficiencies and delayed growth. Please keep this baby boy in your prayers!
Our next surgery was an Ortho trauma surgery that Yolanda was able to first assist with. So she scrubbed in and helped reduce and plate a displaced comminuted femur fracture (aka 3+ pieces) from a motorcycle accident. The tools used were like the tools in my dads work station, including the yellow POWER DRILL that was dirty (not sterile) and stored in a Tupperware container. Ortho tools in the US are equally barbaric but at least they're sterile!
It is very interesting to see the sterile technique used here in comparison to what Meg and I learned at Northside Surgery. Oh the stories we will have from the next 2 weeks after the team leaves as we scrub into surgeries and round on patients. For example today one of the other surgeons poured himself a cup of coffee and meandered into the OR to see how it was going. Then he proceeded to spill some coffee on the patients pillow... definitely sterile practices.
As Damoina said the first day, this is African medicine. The electricity is unreliable (it was in and out all afternoon) and everything is a makeshift fit. I'm glad to have learned the "proper technique" back home during my surgery rotation but I'm equally excited to learn how to think outside the box and make do with what resources we have.
Daily devotion: Acts 16 (again...)
“And on the sabbath day we went forth without the gate by a river side, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down, and spake unto the women that were come together. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one that worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul. And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us.” -Acts 16:13-15
The first day Jill read us Acts 16:9-11 and while Pastor Mike was talking she kept scanning and came across Lydia, a seller of purple. Purple had already come up several times that day and so it's now a thing for the trip. So how amazing that the devotion today including Lydia and her purple goods. It's a reminder that we need to keep our focus on the Lord as we interact with these patients. It's half way through the week and everyone is getting a little tired. It's easy to start cutting corners and not treating patients as they should. But you never know when you will be the one to share Christ's love to a non-believer and forever change their life. God works in mysterious ways and He is definitely leaving us breadcrumbs to follow while here in Madagascar. Please continue to pray for our team as we enter the 2nd half of the week and let us show the same compassion and mercy to the first and last patient of the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment