Feb. 8-Tough Day

February 8, 2011michelleaUncategorized

The worst job …. the recovery room. The nursing staff was slim with Oddrun out sick all day and Mary Ellen on her own. Poor Peter, who has been our main medical translator. Since all the Spanish speaking residents from Coca are gone, Peter was put in with Mary Ellen to do the post op instructions. The mood was grim and the energy was low…maybe it was the altitude…maybe it was the constant crying from the recovery room. The first cleft baby came out of surgery and did not do well in recovery, then came the 2nd cleft baby who cried for hours and just when you thought it could not get worse, the third cleft baby cried for hours. Anthony, was so full of mucous that the anesthesiologists spent hours with him trying to keep him breathing and medicated but nothing seemed to work. The mother tried also and the operating room was short on suction since the machines are normally not in the recovery room. Bose, a resident is spending the night at the hospital tonight because the local nurses refuse to stay with the patients when they are like this. The anesthesiologists returned from the hospital and said that Anthony is doing much better. Although there were 21 surgeries performed today the cleft palate babies sucked the energy of everyone as there was no relief from their poor misery.

Two interesting patients were the double thumbs which proved to be a simple surgery and a cheek implant but you’ll have to wait for the film to see the results.

We visited Carlos who is the founder of the Rotarians. He brought the doctors to Latacunga. He is 80 years old now and you will have to wait to hear more on this as I’m much too tired to write about this as well as Anita, another Rotarian who has similar stories of what we heard from the Coca mayor and prefuncta.

Tomorrow is another long day and Christopher has decided to have another surgery. It turns out his father was asssaulted and they have not found the culprit. He was stabbed and brought to the hospital with a broken neck. Christopher’s mother hoped that his father would live until the team of doctors arrived so they could fix him but perhaps it was a blessing that he passed away before their arrival. If it was another hospital, would he have lived?

Tomorrow is another day of repairing bad surgeries. I’m afraid I cannot leave today on a good note so I’d rather not write much.