Today I was planning on going to church at the little chapel which is on
the hospital grounds. Laura planned to start on her morning rounds before the
service, and I was going with her, but we didn't get very far that morning, and
didn't make it to church either.
First there was a little girl who had been playing and fallen, her mother
explained. She lay limply on the bed and was extremely unresponsive. Laura felt
her for internal injuries, looked at her eyes and ears and tried to get her to
react by pinching her legs and arms. All to no avail. After a while, we had to
move on, so we left her with the nurse and stopped in on a man who was dying of
TB.
After that, we got some medicine from the supply shed and I brought IV
fluids from the pharmacy for the nurses, and then there was a lady who needed
an emergency C-section. This was my
first time being in the operating room anywhere. It was quite the experience.
Dr. Mano had been called in to do a C-section in the night for a 16
year-old girl. The heart rate had been fine before they started the surgery,
but by the time they got the baby out, it was dead. Thankfully, this baby girl
came out alive, but she wouldn't cry. The nurse suctioned her nose and mouth out and rubbed the feet and
put her on oxygen, and finally she made a few little cries. They took her off
to the maternity ward while the woman was being stitched up.
I saw the girl who'd lost her baby today and she looked completely
hopeless. She was sitting up in bed with some of her family around her. How
terribly discouraging to go through a whole pregnancy, as well as the trauma of
surgery, and then lose the baby at the end.
Two men died in the afternoon. When I walked back to the Blue House with
Tom, he told he'd been up half the night because Dr. Mano got called in for a
motorcycle accident as well as the C-section. Tom had to translate for Dr. Mano
from English to French. The hospital staff speak French, but most of the
patients only know Lingala, so communication is sometimes a three step process.
Later in the afternoon I helped hold down a screaming little boy while
Laura pulled a palm nut out of his nose with tweezers. The medicine she gave to
sedate him only seemed to affect him a little, and I felt really bad for him.
He hollered and would not lay still. But soon it was over and he stoped
screaming and sneezed. No wonder.
It was a long day. Tomorrow will be, too. I am helping the Samoutous with
homeschooling and doing some data entry for the meds for Laura. I might hit the
town again with Sarah and see some leprosy patients, too. We’ll see.
