Yesterday I still was able to get a little bit of excitement though... we had finished up in the general surgery room and I was cleaning up some supplies in the sink. One of the nurses from the Maxillo Facial room stuck her head out of their room and asked me if I was busy. I said no. She said "okay then scrub in and come here"! They had been waking up their patient who had had a huge neck tumor removed. As the patient woke up, her neck started getting bigger and bigger. Something was not right. We ended up putting her back to sleep and re-exploring the incision. In the time that had passed since the original surgery ended, enough blood clot had formed to fill an entire kidney dish! We removed all of the clot, found the bleeding vessel and tied it off, and then closed the wound again. It was kind of exciting... it made me miss scrubbing for big cases back home (especially liver transplants Lachica!!!).
In the evening, we attended the first of 3 trivia nights on the ship. I wasn't really looking forward to it, but it was actually really fun and a lot of people turned up to play. Unfortunately my team did not win... but there is always next week!
Today was another hernia day in general surgery. We ended up finishing our list early today and so we were sent to one of the wards to help them assemble paperwork for their charts. As you can see by the picture below, we did lots of work ...and had some time for fun as well!
Taking a break from sorting papers in C ward. It is the smallest ward on the ship and is closed right now. A, B, and D wards are all open and have double the amount of beds!
Even the Anesthetists were put to work counting pills for the pharmacist
This is Arega, he is one of the 3 residents training here on Mercy Ships. The residents each spend 1 month in Maxillo facial, general surgery, and anesthesia.
Tomorrow will be my last day in hernia world and then next week I will hopefully be in Maxillo facial all week where they do lots of big tumor cases.
Wow, I beat Papa to the comment Page!! Sounds like another couple of exciting days. Only 20 more days and you will be back in Canada....can you believe its going so fast!
ReplyDeleteLove you mummer
Linda beat me to it, she did! You know, I would faint at the view of a kidney bowl full of blood and need no further anesthesia; so much for cowardice! Glad I do not have to look further than a glass of red wine. Wishing you much success in your next week of removing tumors, Love, Papa
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