Monday, October 20, 2008

I'm Glad I Know Fray Marshall

Well, today was just perfect. We started with a wonderful breakfast at the hotel. Our team has grown, another surgical technician, Tina Bartels, from Missouri, Ricardo Rodriguez, Dr. Rodrguez´ son from Monterrey, and Randy Singleton, a urologist from SAn Antonio. Unfortunately, the urologist with whom I was going to do the prostatectomy had to leave suddenly on a family emergency, so it was up to me and Grant. We arrived at the hospital, and the patients started rolling in. The first case was an open ureterolithotomy, a case that has been made somewhat obsolete with the improved endoscopic and shockwave techniques, but still a great surgery (I´ll post pics later). The case went swimmingly, skin-to-skin in just under an hour. After that came the prostatectomy. Having assisted on several with Dr. Marshall , my chairman, and done a couple, I took it upon myself to do the case as surgeon with Grant assisting. Before I describe the case there are a couple of things to know about how the hospital works. First, if we need blood, there is not a blood bank at this hospital, so the patient´s family members have to go to another hospital, give a sample, and then bring the blood in a cooler to our hospital, and the blood is only good for the day. Secondly, there are no narcotic medications in the hospital, and toradol is given sporadically. Third, the anesthesiologists aren´t completely familiar with the machine, so this case was going to be done under spinal anesthesia. All that being said, the case went about as well as it could have, and I´m quite happy to say Grant and I did the case in just over 2hrs. By the time we were done, the other OR was just about done, so I just did a cysto and stent removal on a young lady who had undergone renal transplant recently.

I really cannot express how happy I feel being here, not only because of the awesome cases I´m doing, but the other folks in the group, as well as the nurses and docs from here have made this a pleasurable time. The layers of beaurocracy that exist between caretakers and patients in the States is not so here. Although there are certainly difficulties in getting adequate care for people, once they get to us, the level of care and gratitude on both sides is very fulfilling. And despite a big day in the OR, I don´t feel the fatigue and stress I normally do on a daily basis.

Speaking of daily basis, it rained again today. I could be a weatherman in Tapachula no problem. It would go something like this:Ít will be warm today with cloud cover later, and a rainshower in the evening. Back to you Raul.´

I´ll post pics later.

~Kmoses

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