Wow what a great start to the day with the medical team. We all meet for the morning report for the surgical and orthopedic residents. Bill gave a great lecture to all the residents and doctors. He did an awesome job and I heard great compliments from everyone. Hope Ministries goal is to teach, so we can leave long term changes. Then we had the first 2 orthopedic residents stand up and they were presented a scholarship from Iowa Orthopedics Association for this year of school. They have so few orthopedics, that Dr. Isidor started the first orthopedic residency program at BMC. He said many residents don’t go on to specialize, because they cannot afford it. Well these young men were so happy to receive these funds. Thanks so much to Iowa Orthopedics and everyone who made this possible. Praise God.
We then made rounds with the general surgical team. You cannot believe the cases that we see. It is totally a WOW factor. There were two women on the wards that had be beaten by their husbands. There is a tribe around here that if the women argue with their husbands they beat them or use a knife on them. One women had her hand missing and another one had a large laceration on her head and her eye ruptured where she was hit and will never see out of that eye again. Then I saw the first ever case of a women who had large necrotic areas on both hips because of some malaria injections. On my….unbelievable.
Poor Mark did not get home from doing surgeries until 11 am. Poor guy, what a long day.
Please continue to pray for the team. We have a big day tomorrow.
Gayle
Hi all! Today was a day to remember as Olivia and I (Halie Larsen) were able to spend the day shadowing and observing three very unique surgeries performed by general surgeon, Dr. Bill Rizk. The first surgery was a choledochoduodenostomy (try saying that ten times fast, I couldn’t even type it). This surgery took place after a gall bladder removal (a few days prior) as there was still a stone obstructing the common bile duct, which caused severe jaundice in the patient. If this were to have been untreated, the damage would have been even more severe. Dr. Rizk removed the stone and bypassed the end of the common bile duct by attaching it to the duodenum. The second surgery was a very sick little girl that was on the ward. The doctors decided if they did not do an exploratory this little girl was going to die. They found a hole in the bowel, so she had a sever peritonitis. I had the privilege of scrubbing in for it. During this surgery, the cecum and appendix were removed and then an ileostomy was created to relieve the pressure from the bowels. This is the first ileostomy I have ever seen, so it was really neat having such a great view of the procedure. The third surgery was a hernia removal, which Olivia had the opportunity to scrub in with. This hernia was especially interesting to watch as the cause was due to a recent c-section. It was another great learning experience as Dr. Rizk once again proved to be a great teacher by giving explanations of the processes of each procedure. I’m excited to see what tomorrow’s OR has in store!
