Tuesday, July 13th
Today was a stressful, but successful day. Some of the team went into the villages for hospice visits. They had one patient who had fell out of a tree a year ago. The patient didn’t get any help after he had fallen out of a tree. So, when they arrived on scene, this patient had been bed ridden since his accident and had 3 large sores on his back. The sores were even covered in maggots. This was something that hit the team pretty hard. They saw first hand why turning patients is so important.
Another one of the Hospice patients had prostate cancer. We learned that in their culture they do not tell the patient if they have cancer
. So instead of calling it cancer, they called it a tumor. The reason they do this is so the patients are able to live out the last days of their life with as much hope as possible. The team was so thankful that they were chosen to go on the hospice visits today. First of all, the hospice team was so blessed for our great healthcare system in America. They were also very thankful that they were able to be a couple more sets of hands to provide anything that the nurses and social workers needed. This blessed the medical team greatly.
The rest of the team was at the hospital today. We started the day with chapel and let me tell you, the hospital choir was incredible! They sounded like angels from heaven. After chapel we headed to the OR for surgeries. Today was a wonderful learning experience. We were able to experience so many things that we never would have gotten to experience back home.
The last surgery threw us for a loop. The patient had had a failed surgery on his ankle, so he was having another surgery to try and correct his ankle. After they cut him open, he started to bleed out and after awhile of constantly loosing blood, his blood pressure started to drop. Luckily we noticed it and tried to help him. After one thing going wrong after another, his stats finally started to rise. The surgery ended up lasting over 3 hours. When we finally got him stable we were very relieved. When we left the operating room the song “Our God is an Awesome God” was playing and immediately we knew that he was there with us and helped carry us through the day.
Overall, we appreciated today. The atmosphere was so welcoming and the Doctors and nurses were willing to explain things to us when we didn’t understand. They never made us feel like we were in the way or a waste of space and for that awesome experience we are forever grateful! Thanks for all of your prayers. Each and every one of them is listened to and they all matter, because the need in this country is so high.
God bless!
Kaitlyn
