Surgery by flashlight
Our operating room is made of tarp walls and the dirt floor and tin roof of a small house or church building. It is a challenge to keep the chickens and dogs and curious children out. The patient lays down on a kitchen table borrowed from a neighbor or a church pew or one of our dental chairs. Several student missionaries or Bible workers hold flashlights to illuminate the surgical site while Doctor Richard operates.
We repair hernias, remove cysts and tumors, remove bullets and keloids, and last week we did three circumcisions. Mostly we remove tumors. From foreheads and legs and necks and backs and behind ears.
To prepare for surgery I pull supplies when there is a quiet moment in clinic. I put the instruments we'll need to soak in iodine, then grab sterile gloves, lidocaine, needles and syringes, gauze, alcohol, scalpel blades, sutures, tegaderms, and clean gloves on a tray.
(As I'm sitting here writing this I'm struggling to remember the words for some of these things in English. I've grown so accustomed to calling a scapel a "bisturi," and a needle an "aguja").
Jenni and I take turns scrubbing in with the Doctor and being the circulation nurse. By scrubbing in we put on sterile gloves and assist with cutting and dabbing and holding instruments. There usually is no water for a scrub before the surgery.
When we do surgeries it is usually at night when clinic is finished and we are tired. But I enjoy it, I enjoy talking to the patients during the operation and being aware of sterile field and learning how to anticipate what the doctor wants next.
Many of the patients have been bothered by these tumors and cysts and hernias for some time, because they have no way to afford the simple operations to remove or repair them. I'm thankful that we can provide free and good quality care to them.
We repair hernias, remove cysts and tumors, remove bullets and keloids, and last week we did three circumcisions. Mostly we remove tumors. From foreheads and legs and necks and backs and behind ears.
To prepare for surgery I pull supplies when there is a quiet moment in clinic. I put the instruments we'll need to soak in iodine, then grab sterile gloves, lidocaine, needles and syringes, gauze, alcohol, scalpel blades, sutures, tegaderms, and clean gloves on a tray.
(As I'm sitting here writing this I'm struggling to remember the words for some of these things in English. I've grown so accustomed to calling a scapel a "bisturi," and a needle an "aguja").
Jenni and I take turns scrubbing in with the Doctor and being the circulation nurse. By scrubbing in we put on sterile gloves and assist with cutting and dabbing and holding instruments. There usually is no water for a scrub before the surgery.
When we do surgeries it is usually at night when clinic is finished and we are tired. But I enjoy it, I enjoy talking to the patients during the operation and being aware of sterile field and learning how to anticipate what the doctor wants next.
Many of the patients have been bothered by these tumors and cysts and hernias for some time, because they have no way to afford the simple operations to remove or repair them. I'm thankful that we can provide free and good quality care to them.
posted by Ansley at 2:00 PM
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