Will it hard to believe but this is our last day to work at St. Joseph's Hospital. Mark and I headed to the hospital and saw many patients and then surgery on a very badly fractured ankle that was 4 weeks old. We were so excited because the small fragment set that Synthes donated was put to good use the last 2 days of surgery. We worked with the staff on how and when to use the equipment and they were so very grateful and excited. Many lives have been touched through the donation of this equipment. You would have thought it was Christmas in the OR when we presented with all this equipment. Thanks Synthes you have helped so many people and will continue to help with through this donation. I received a personal written thank you from the head of the hospital and the orthopedic doctor. Dr. Mark Wheeler is such a wonderful teacher and is so kind and patient in teaching the doctors about how to do these surgeries. We finished our surgeries and I went and meet with the administrator and head of the hospital to say our good byes. They are all so appreciate of what we did to help them.
Cheryl, Sarah and Julius went with the Hospice team to do Hospice Home visits. They were impressed with the multidisciplinary team that go to do these home visits. It is a pastor, clinical officer, nurse, and social worker. The patients and families cried when they were presented the food. This team serves 5000 patients and 4300 are patients with HIV. The sad thing is they only have 5 nurses to serve this many patients, so they train volunteers from the different villages to make visits. The social worker talked about the great need of these patients. The team was impressed with how the hospice team prayed and sang worship songs with the patient and family.
After Mark and I arrived in Arusha, I was more than excited to have a hot shower. It had been one week and felt really good. Oh I did shower, but was cold. The whole team went to an outside barbecue and really enjoyed the outside garden and food. When we returned home, Cheryl and Sarah packed for their safari.
Thanks for the continual prayers and words of support that we receive from everyone back home.
