WARNING: The graphic nature of some of the photographs may not be comfortable for some viewers - enter at your own risk! (it is interesting though if you can stomach it!)
Another wonderful day at the makeshift hospital. We are absolutely amazed at all the people! This gentleman came in with a mass on his face. He was very uncomfortable and complained of the mass obstructing his vision. He told us he had had it since he was eight years old and had had it drained once but "no answer" - which is Tamil-speak for "the treatment I got didn't work"!
Dr. Harper bravely set out to remove whatever the thing was! Once she got the thing open it quickly became apparent it was a sebaceous syst. The thing drained about 10 ml (2 tsp.) of oil! Once the cyst was collapsed, she set out to remove to cyst wall to prevent it from refilling - don't want him going to someone else and saying "no answer" for OUR treatment! Here you can see how deep this thing goes!
This shows one of the ways we "creatively" used the equipment we had at hand. Dr. Harper got the bright idea to use an angiocath (the thin, flexible tubing that stays in the arm with and IV) on the end of a syringe as a suction device. This worked in many ways over the days. We also used the same set-up for flushing ears and etc.
I love this photo! You can see how challenging our set-up was at times. Yes, that is the yard over our shoulders. The lighting in the room we had as an OR was not always adequate so they just opened up the glass wall and let the breeze blow in! We were blessed with excellent weather and cool breezes so that was nice - the sterility? Not so much! But we prayed hard and covered everybody with antibiotics and will continue praying for no infection to set in. All-in-all I think with God's help we made a big difference in a few lives.
A view of the man's face after surgery is complete. This looks a bit worse than it actually was because we smeared antibiotic ointment liberally once the stitches were in! But he can see un-obstructed now, Praise the Lord!
We had no electro-cautery equipment (we didn' always have electricity!) so when bleeding became an issue, we used the old fashioned "let-the-nurse-hold-pressure-for-five-minutes" method! It worked though - the bleeding stopped and he was ready to go! Gotta tell ya', I was praying hard though and even asked Chuck Watson who was our medical photographer to come over and help me pray! I wasn't as confident as Dr. Andrea that this method would work!
Here is a view of our OR from the yard looking in. David George (aka. King David) is our interpreter for the OR and he is standing on Dr. Andrea's left. My hair style for the day? Unavailable to critters - I didn't care what it looked like - just as long as I didn't have any passengers to bring home!
Okay, so his vision is still a bit obstructed, but that will come off in a day or so and he will be able to see better than he has since he was eight! How great is our God!
1 comment:
those are actually fun to do...I know...gross but I loved helping Shaffer with them.
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