Friday, January 16th
Well today was our last day to work at Selian. I just love working with the staff and doctors there, it feels like home. We have had some long days with very difficult surgeries, but they all went well. Alex is such a great surgeon and awesome teacher and the doctors have learned so much from him and performed procedures they had never done before. Today we had some very difficult surgeries, but the patients were excited when they saw deformities fixed and maybe now had a straight leg, foot or arm. We come home pretty exhausted with standing for long hours, and today we started at 730 am and finished at 8 pm. Here is the ER at Selian as we were leaving tonight.
Above is a picture of a young man with a severe deformed leg that has lived with this for many years. If you click on the image number you will get a drop down message and if you click on that you will see a video of this young man walking. Today the ortho team straightened his leg and when we were done and had the cast on he looked down and smiled. Oh the poor things these people have to live with.
I spent 5 hours with the accountant at the hospital today going over all the patients that Hope is sponsoring. WOW the list was long and Hope will pay for their medical and surgical care. But I smiled and thanked God for sending me the people He wanted us to help.
Selian also received some great donated items. First was a surgical bed that we shipped from the US and Alex is the one who made that possible. Then there was all the orthopedic equipment that was work around $50,000 usds. This was a generous donation from a medical distributor in Tennessee. This is equipment that is badly needed at this hospital. In fact we need some of the medical equipment to do our surgeries.
As always it is hard for me to say good-bye to my dear friends at the hospital and love all the hugs I get when we say goodbye and they are so grateful for all that we do for them.
The team is still out on safari and today they went to the Ngorongoro National Park, which is one of my favorites. It sounds like they had an exciting time and the pictures show it through their smiles. They will be returning tomorrow night. I am missing them all. Please say some special prayers as we prepare to fly to Mwanza on Sunday to work at Bugando for the week. Sounds like we are going to be busy.
