Day 6
It has been a very productive day! Jason, Lucy, and I got to the hospital at seven o’clock to get the patient prepped for surgery. We got to the hospital early so we could get started on time and hopefully not have too late of a day. Everything was set up and ready to go and then the anesthesiologist told us the patient, Niget, a fourteen years old, had an upper repertory infection. At that point we had to wait on Dr. Belanger to arrive to clear her for surgery. When Dr. Belanger arrived he evaluated Niget and determined she just had a cold and would be fine to have surgery since it wasn’t in her lungs. With Dr. Bess and Dr. Ted working on the patient they knocked it out in no time! Unfortunately, Jason and Lucy both got sick and had to leave the hospital because they were white as ghosts. We think it may have been something they ate. I spent the remainder of the day sitting in the closet organizing and getting everything I needed done for the day. We left pretty early and called it a night.
Day 7
We got to the hospital early once again! We were all a little groggy today. We got to the hospital and prepped the patient for surgery. We then went to round on the other patients. We changed all of the patient’s bandages and walked them. The patient from yesterday need their stitches addressed because they hadn’t closed all the way. I helped Dr. Bess change her bandage and put more steri strips on. She seemed to be doing much better after we changed her bandages. After that Lucy and I changed Tariks bandages. She is doing SO GREAT! She was walking! From the ICU to walking down the hall with her dad, she has improved so much.
We finished our rounds around ten o’clock so Lucy and I decided to go shopping for souvenirs. We asked Abebe if he would take us to the Mercato, the largest and oldest open air market in Africa. It was very scary, but extremely interesting. We didn’t get out of the car at the Mercato, we just drove through it. It took about an hour to get through it all. Then we went to a place called In N Out Burger which is not to be confused with the In N Out Burger in the states. We had the first “American” meal here, chicken nuggets. I’m pretty sure it was not chicken, but we’re ignoring that fact. After that we went to a souvenir store. It was extremely overpriced so we decided to go somewhere else tomorrow. Then we went to pick Vin up from the airport because he was joining us today. He didn’t know we would be waiting outside so he stayed inside, and we were outside for around two hours in the rain. We were about to leave but I saw him from afar and Abebe ran in the rain after him to get him to the car. We got a call from my mom from the OR telling us not to come back to the hospital because they had to abort the surgery. This was a huge case, it was a posterior kyphosis case and the general surgeon from Ethiopia couldn’t find the spine so they had to abort it. They are going to try again from the back tomorrow. This girl really needs the help so I hope everything works out. Will write again tomorrow! Sorry they have been so short the past two days!