Uncharted Territories

 

I’m titling this post “Uncharted Territories”. For obvious reasons I am calling it this, because today today was full of “the unexpected and unknown” for me. Having never been to Tanzania and never participating on a medical mission, I was not sure what we’d be walking into when we arrived at Saint Elizabeth’s hospital. We arrived at the Operating Ward and were greeted by 2 friendly nurses who gave us gracious hugs upon arrival. They were thrilled to see Dr Tang and Dr Tiner back! We unloaded the Land Rovers that were full of supplies (30 bags) and instruments and slowly began the process of organizing our stuff. It takes a village to set up operating rooms and I’m so thankful for all the willing hands we had. Then next steps was screening patients and setting up the OR schedule. Over 100 patients waited in a long line to go through the process. One patient told me she had been waiting since 4:00 am to see us. Approximately 1/2 is those patients were potential surgical candidates and had to stand in another line to see the surgeons and anesthesiologists. This phase of the process can be the most heart breaking and also the most hopeful for patients. There are certain surgeries that are too complex to accomplish in the short period of time we have here. Other times we don’t have the specialized technology or tools to do what we need and patients are unfortunately turned away. On the other hand, we have been able to tell 26 patients that they are good surgical candidates and have placed them on our schedule for the week. There are so many children that were brought to us with burns, who had contractures as a result. On the orthopedic side, malunion fractures were the majority of what we will be working on. The next 5 days are going to be a whirlwind for the “surgery team” but we are all excited to get started early tomorrow. We’ll keep you posted on our exciting team interactions and experience through the week! So stay tuned…

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