Third day in the DR was a busy one. We had 7 surgeries scheduled, and with only one ENT surgeon, with myself to assist and Dr. Wang doing everything else, we knew it would be a little crazy. Today was Tonsil and Adenoid day, and one nasal polyp biopsy/removal. Most of these kids have huge chronically infected tonsils and adenoids, and many of them were symptomatic (trouble breathing/eating/fevers/etc). Taking them out may seem like a minor thing, and maybe even routine in some regard, but here it is difficult to get surgery. One of the moms was explaining how she had placed her child on a waiting list for six months to have the tonsils removed. When the day of surgery came, they drove a few hours to the hospital and waited....and the surgeon did not show up to do the surgery. The next available slot was a year later. You hear stories like that and it makes our small trips feel much larger. Sure there are 60ish kids waiting for these surgeries in this region, and we will do a total of of 15ish this week, abd again with one surgeon and a total of 3 people from Rush here working.....enough said. The most amazing thing is that this really isn't a "short term service trip" by any means. Because Dr. Wang and the Rush group travel here so frequently, we can tell people that we will be back and we can schedule them for another trip. Many of the surgeries we would like to do, we simply do not have the supplies needed. But now knowing what we need, we can try to acquire those supplies before the next trip and maybe we can do some more of those complicated cases. Either way, this short trip is going to have some amazing results. This evening after we finished all the surgical cases, we drove back down to Azua (the main region that we are staying in). There is a hospital there owned by the Taiwanese (long story) and a general surgeon and his wife, who is an anesthesiologist, invited us to join them for dinner. They are both truly incredible people. He works in the area and does some cases at the hospital that we work in. When we do trips here, he comes and volunteers his time to do some surgical cases as well. I guess he says that if we can come from America to do free surgeries, he can come help his own community alongside us. His wife works in anesthesia in the Taiwan hospital and was a big asset when the orthopedic surgeons were here with us a few weeks ago (they worked in that hospital as they have more ORs and more ortho equipment). Anyway, we met them at a building they work in, which had a rooftop party thing going on. They ordered pizza (which was quite delicious really, and had the most meat I've ever seen on a pizza) and we got to relax and chat with them and a few of the other Dominicans we have been working with. When we got back I decided to take a hike up the mountain to the dam/waterfall I had gone to a few weeks ago. I like night time hikes, and with it being11pm and pitch black, the stars are absolutely amazing. It's about an hour walk there and back, so it was a nice quiet hike and a chance to reflect on things that happened the last few days. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and finishing the rest of our cases. We were supposed to have two more cleft lip/palate kids come in, but we haven't heard.....maybe they'll just show up. But we have 4 cases otherwise scheduled for tomorrow. Thankfully we haven't had any surgical complications or post-op infections. Actually, Dr. Wang said that over the years they've done over 800 surgeries and never had a really severe post-op infection. Considering the conditions in which we do surgery, and the limited resources.....it's amazing. I can describe in detail to you in person sometime kind of how different things are, but it would be difficult in a short post to really give you a good picture of it. Maybe if you see some pictures from the trip on the website you'll get an idea for how different things are. I think that God has his hand on this place though and he is watching out for everyone that comes on these trips, whether they believe in him or not. He definitely has not forgotten about these people. Continue to pray for our success here, and pray for the people of the DR, especially the community here in Peralta.
No comments:
Post a Comment