Let me start by saying that if you do not find yourself drawn to in-depth medical descriptions, if you tend to feel dizzy at the sight of blood, if you don’t like action-packed movies—then this is NOT the blog for you.

Once upon a time there were two college girls named Priscilla and Faith who decided to go to Congo to learn about nursing. Faith specifically was very interested in the medical missions field and felt as though working at a mission hospital over the summer would shed some light on this desire of hers.

Each week of their month-long stay Priscilla and Faith had been working in different areas of the hospital—Maternity, the Emergency Room, and the Operating Room. This week was Operation Week, and today was their last day scheduled in such an action-packed area of the hospital!

Their day began at the hospital like every other day—devotions, reports, rounds—neither of them had any sort of inclination to what the day would bring. However, by the end of rounds it was concluded that four surgeries would have to occur today in the Bloc (Operating Rooms)! This was more surgeries in 1 day than had occurred all week, their excitement skyrocketed! So the dynamic duo immediately headed to the Bloc to begin preparing for a long and action packed day ahead!

Once in the Bloc the team assessed the cases for the day:

1)    A woman was in need of a repaired ureter. The previous night this woman had gone into labor and was unable to push her baby out due to the fact that her pelvic region had swollen to threes times larger than normal! The baby was trapped in the birthing canal so the doctors preformed an emergency cesarean section around midnight. However, during the operation she began bleeding due to tearing in (literally squirting blood) her uterus and connecting arteries experienced due to the swelling and pressure. To stop the bleeding and future infection, the doctors removed her uterus (called a hysterectomy). After the removal, the stitching up process was complicated and tedious and one of the women’s ureters (the tube that brings urine from your kidneys to your bladder) was stitched too, causing a blockage in urine removal today. SO she needed to have that ureter unstitched and repaired.

2)    A man needed two hernias fixed. A hernia is when there is a weakness in around the abdominal area (occurring mostly in men), which causes tissue to penetrate the area, become stuck/pinched, and then lose a majority of blood/oxygen circulation. It is very painful, but pretty straightforward to fix.

3)    Two ladies needed to have abscesses drained. This required tubes to be put in so that continual drainage could occur.

So Priscilla scrubbed into the ureter repair and Faith scrubbed the hernia repair.

Priscilla would be working with the American/English speaking doctors Dr. Tenpenny and Dr. Wegner, while Faith would be working with all French speaking doctors and nurses—what an adventure!

Faith and her Congolese team prepared the patient by cleaning his abdominal area with betadine, and then covering all other areas that were not to being operated on with sheets and towels. They all prayed, and then the surgery began! Faith was in charge of passing tools to the doctor, and pulling skin flaps away from the area to be operated on. She was to pull on a hook that was placed under the skin flap. First the doctor cut through the layers of skin, fascia, and fat using both a scalpel and the electrical “flame-thrower” that Faith attempted to describe in a previous blog post. Then the real surgery began. The doctors cut out the spermatic cord (which consists of the sperm duct, the ureter, the inguinal ligament) so that it was free to grab onto instead of webbed into other tissue. The spermatic cord comes through an orifice (a hole) that is ONLY meant for the spermatic cord to come through. BUT often there is a weakness in this area due to the fact that in infancy a man’s testicles must descend through this orifice, so the hole must be pliable to some degree. Often the orifice does not become strong and tight, so it is an area prone to hernia formation.

So once you reach this area where the spermatic cord is located, it is easy to take the excess tissue (the hernia) that is coming through the orifice, stuff it back onto the other side of the hole, and then stitch the hole to be tight and small. Wahlah, that is it!

After the stuffing and stitching process, it was time to close the man back up. The doctor and nurse stitched the fat and fascia together, and then once it came time to stitch the skin closed, they handed the needle off to Faith! Faith had not yet been given full reign of the needle, so this was her time to shine! First the nurse showed Faith how to stitch so that the skin would come together tightly and neatly. He then handed the needle back to Faith. She made a stitch…decent but not great, so the nurse showed again. Faith made a second stitch...much better, but could still use improvement. Faith went for her third stitch…it was great! Faith’s fourth stitch wasn’t so hot…so the nurse held onto her hand for the fifth and guided it through. However, when it came time to pull the needle through, there was an inconsistency with how much force the nurse pulled the needle with, and Faith’s reaction time to the pull.

Now it is time to hold onto your seats people.

The needle came rocketing through the man’s abdominal skin and pierced through Faith’s glove into her finger. She froze. She stared at her finger as she saw blood begin to slowly ooze beneath her glove from the small hole that had just been made. She quickly informed the assisting nurse (his name was Ruffan) that she had been stuck, and he immediately ripped off her glove. He then yelled something at another assisting nurse (his name was Orcxance), who then sprung to his feet, ran to get some materials and then grabbed Faith’s hand! He submerged her hand in cleaning alcohol, drowned it in betadine, and then rinsed it under cold water while he squeezed out blood from the site that had been pierced. Orcxance then grabbed a towel, told Faith to put pressure on the site, and then he ran out the door to tell the lab! Meanwhile Faith prayed and went to tell the American doctors who were also in surgery what had just happened. The American doctors asked if an HIV test had been done on the man, and Ruffan yelled from the neighboring surgery room that Orcxance was running to see! Faith was worried. Faith tried not to panic. Then Orcxance ran in to the surgery room and made an enormous motion like that of a baseball ump that signaled to Faith that she was safe, the man was HIV negative! Everyone was relieved, especially Faith.

After this adventure, Faith went to lunch before returning to the Bloc for abscess draining. Abscess draining is quite boring, so this story will relieve you from having to read about puss-removal.

The rest of the story for the day pales in comparison to the adventures in the Bloc, however it was Claire Harvey’s 21^st birthday today, so celebrations did take place, pie was eaten, and gifts were exchanged!

Goodnight all!