Today we woke up at the hospital grounds; we spent the night in the Samoutou’s house. It was super nice being right where we needed to be, not having to bike 3 miles in the heat to the hospital at 6:40am. I slept till 6:20 before rolling out of bed, making coffee, and heading to morning devotions and then morning report.

We again started our morning by going on rounds with Dr. Wegner and Dr. Tenpenny. In the surgery/recovery room I saw a women who has been here for 2 weeks and today I witnessed her smile for the first time since her arrival. It was seriously such a joyous thing to see. For the past two weeks she has just pursed her lips and scolded us whenever we walked in, but today she almost seemed excited and happy to see us! Beautiful.

After rounds we headed to the Bloc (OR) to observe and help in some of the surgeries going on today. So here goes, the first surgery I have ever observed ended up being….drum roll please…..wait for it….removing a cyst from a man’s testicle! It was interesting and kinda hilarious because Dr. Tenpenny was doing the removal and Dr. Wegner walked in and dramatically screamed “ahhhhhhhhhhhhh” right as Dr. Tenpenny stuck a needle into the man’s scrotum (it’s a little weird writing this knowing my mother is reading this blog…). These two doctors are like teenage boys sometimes haha.

The next surgery we helped with was stitching up a huge laceration that a baby had behind his ear due to an abscess removal. Dr. Tenpenny sutured (stitched) and it was incredible. I have always thought that suturing was very similar to sewing, like hemming pants or something, but it was very different! I mean in many ways it is similar, there is “thread” and a very tiny needle, but the whole technique is very intricate and you basically don’t use your hands at all. He used multiple metal instruments (which I need to learn the real names of), and just made different loops and picked up different ends of the thread to make super smooth and tight stitches. Suturing is seriously an art.

The last surgery was to remove a baby, placenta, and all other dead tissue from a mother who had experienced a spontaneous abortion (also called a miscarriage). The baby was less than 3 months old so I couldn’t really even recognize that a fetus was taken out, it was mostly loose tissue and clumpy blood that needed to be removed. The placenta was smaller than the size of an egg. It was such a gruesome process, so many long metal instruments ranging in diameter were used to soften the cervix and increase its width so that everything in the uterus could be scraped out. This procedure is called a DNC = Dilate and Scrape (in French). I would almost describe it as violent, even Dr. Wegner said that we should be grateful to be women who can receive medical care in America. There is a picture of the ultrasound we used to make sure everything was scraped out, the red is circling the uterus which is a small oval inside, and the blue is the actual instrument of Dr. Wegner inside of the women, and the black area above the red oval is the women’s bladder.

The DNC didn’t even compare to what I got to do this afternoon though! After lunch Dr. Wegner found Priscilla and I and said he and Dr. Tenpenny would be opening up a girl’s abdomen because she was having lots of pain and pressure in her bowel area (large intestines). AND I got to scrub in for real, not just observe! Scrubbing in takes a while, you have to wash your hands for a while in a particular way, from your hands down to your elbows so that dirt doesn’t run down to your clean hands. Then you walk to the operating room with your hands up and open the door by pushing it open with your back. You then dry your hands off (also in a very specific way) so that nothing is wiped with the same part of the towel twice. Then you grab onto your gown, which is somehow folded like a book. You stick your hands in these holes in the folds of the gown and then when you drop the gown it somehow falls perfectly for you to just stick your arms into the sleeves. The gloves take forever to put on so I will spare you from any more boring explanations. So once I was finally scrubbed in I helped prepare the place where the doctors were going to cut. We placed a bunch of large abdominal compress pieces around the area and checked to make sure the lady was fully anesthetized by poking her belly with a forceps. Then the cutting began. They used a scalpel first to cut through the skin, and then an instrument that was like a miniature flame-thrower (that’s an exaggeration), but it burns through fat, fascia, and other stuff I don’t remember the name of. And when they had cut through all of that, we were staring at her intestines. It is crazy how much surgeons dig around inside their patients during surgery; no wonder people are so sore post-surgery! They began by sucking out all of the pus and excess fluid, and then they began feeling around for what could be causing the pressure and pain. They found it. It was an enormously hard and node-covered area of the large intestine and its peritoneum (connective tissue). They even had me stick my hand way down inside of her abdominal cavity to feel it. It was rock hard and would not move. Both of the doctors where shocked and extremely disappointed with the find because they knew that there was nothing they could do. They proposed that it was either cancer or lymphoma, and that this 27-year-old girl would probably die very soon, maybe less than a month. So they placed a tube in the side of the girl to suck out pus after the surgery. I got to assist in the suturing process; there is a picture bellow.

After the surgery Priscilla and I left to go back to the mission. When we got back I ran while she biked. At one point I had to run around two goats bucking-it-out in the middle of the road…oh the things you see in Congo haha. After we returned from the run, we showered (Fun Faith Fact: I shaved my legs for the first time in 3 weeks. Africa turns women into men) and then we began making dinner. For dinner we made fried bananas, it took a while, but they ended up tasting soooo good, almost like candy! We are often forced to be creative and resourceful here. There is basically no such thing as paper napkins or bags here because those things are banned to prevent excess waste. Sooo we used lady’s (unused) sanitary pads to dab the excess oil off the bananas after frying them! The creativity never ends people!

Prayer:
  For the 27 year old girl who I scrubbed into surgery for. The doctors are actually praying she has tuberculosis instead and not what they think it is, it seems really bleak that we have to pray in this manner, but that’s how life is here. Please pray that no matter what the outcome is, we would be able to comfort her and support her. It is so tragic that she might die at such a young age!

Goodnight!