First off, I need to correct myself and say that I am not in the town of Banso. Banso is just the name of the hospital. The city that I am in, and where the hospital is located, is Kumbo and it is in the county of Banso. With that corrected…I can hardly hard to believe that I’ve already spent 2 days here in Kumbo. My time here is going to go by so fast! Yesterday was my first day at the hospital. We have to be down at the hospital at 6:40am, so I woke up at 1:30am to make sure I was ready to go. Actually, I did wake up at 1:30am, but not because I wanted to! I guess my body was still adjusting to the time here so I was wide awake at 1:30am, but definitely wished I was sleeping. We headed down to the hospital and on the way it hit me how tired I was. On Monday and Friday Dr Snell does what is called grand rounds with the residents. They go through the entire hospital and talk about the patients that are there whom they have seen, what procedure they had done and what they plan to do from here out. Dr Snell listens to them, asks questions and corrects where needed. (For those of you that don’t know, residency is essentially where you learn to do the specialty you have chosen. For the PAACS program all of the residents are training/studying to be surgeons and Dr. Snell is their teacher, which is why he is here). I have been in many hospitals and worked in one for a year, but this hospital is so different. There are smells and sights that you would never find in the states and in some ways it is very sad. The people here battle things we would never even imagine simple because of their living conditions.
After grand rounds we went to the OR (operating room) to start on the surgeries for the day. I was asked, before each surgery, if I wanted to scrub in (which means put on sanitary gloves, apron, etc and work right there with the surgeon), which is something I would NEVER be asked in the states. I declined yesterday because my stomach wasn’t feeling too good, but I am excited to scrub in on as many surgeries as possible from here out! The surgery that I watched first was a woman who had fibroids in her uterus. Warning, if you are sensitive to this kind of stuff skip to the next paragraph…fibroids are benign tumors that form out of tissue. They believe that they occur in the uterus of women who don’t get pregnant because they don’t go for a period (9months) without having more tissue formed in the uterus, which is what happens during the menstrual cycle. So, they cut her open and removed the fibroids from her uterus and sowed it back up with the hope that she will be able to bear children. Now, you’re probably thinking, well maybe they are like the size of a ping pong ball or a racquetball…I think there were about five that they cut out. One was about the size of a football, two a bit bigger than a softball, and a few that were about the size of a baseball. Yes, all of that was inside of her. Needless to say, when she came in she looked like she was pregnant and when she left she looked normal. Pretty incredible.
Welcome back those of you that skipped the good part…there were a few surgeries after that one and then we headed home for the day. The rest of my day consisted of a nap, a run, some great home cooked food and heading to bed. Something that I have noticed just in my two days here is that medicine here is very different than in the states. For example, during the fibroid surgery yesterday, the doctors noticed that she also had a hemorrhage, so they fixed it at the same time. In the states, you would have to do the procedure you had set out to do (only) and then sow her back up and ask if they could do the hemorrhage later. If you don’t, you get sued. Another example is that there was a guy who came in with a fractured femur and when they went to put the rod in they realized there was a lot of puss surrounding the fracture and they determined that it had calcified enough to not need to put in the rod so they sowed him back up. In the states, you would probably remove the puss, clean it up and put in the rod. Medicine here is done so that the person can live, breathe, walk, work on their farm, etc. In the states we do surgeries to make people walk and keep them alive, but we also do surgeries to help people lose weight, to make people look good, etc. However, there are many times here when surgery is the patient’s only option, whereas in the states there are cortisone shots, medication and other things that can be done. Not to mention all of the preventative medicine that we have in the states.
So that was yesterday, today, Tuesday, I actually didn’t go to the hospital, but rather I went to the market with Yvonne and our house maid, also named Yvonne. The market only comes once every 8 days and because they are still unsure if the violence is done for sure, Mark wanted me to go today so that I could see and experience it (it didn’t happen last week because of the strike and violence). We walked down to the market and it was quite the experience. All the farmers come and bring their vegetables, beans, fruits, meat, etc. The craziest thing to me was the butcher. We get there and there is a cow head leaned up against the hut and guts on a table with fresh blood on them and flies all over the place! Yvonne Snell said they were most likely trying to tell you that they had just killed the cow that morning so it was nice and fresh. We then go into the hut and order the beef. It is all laid out on a wood table that has probably not been cleaned with any type of disinfectant in a really, really long time. We ordered the meat we need and he cut it up, weighed it and put it in a plastic bag for us. Definitely USDA approved!
There was one thing that really struck me while at the market today with the Yvonne’s. Yvonne Snell (who for the sake of confusion will call Mrs. Snell) has essentially adopted the other Yvonne while she is here. Three days a week Yvonne comes over and Mrs. Snell does a devotion with her and prays with her. Also, there is a laundry machine next door, but Mrs. Snell chooses to pay Yvonne to wash our clothes by hand to support her. Yvonne is pretty incredible. Her mom died about two years ago from breast cancer, so she lives in a house with her brother (a senior in high school), sister (22) and her cousin (20). Their house consists of two rooms about 12ftx12ft each. They have one bed, where two of them sleep, and the other two sleep on the floor. She works very hard for her wage, which is about 7500 francs/week (which is about $17). Today we were near an electronics store and Yvonne wanted to buy a calculator for her brother because he is finishing up high school and next year will go to the college here and plans to study pre-med. The calculator she was looking at getting for him was 3500francs. Now pause for a second. Say you make $1000/week and you want to buy your brother a calculator. Can you imagine spending $450, nearly half of your week’s salary, on one?! I know it’s a bit out of context because calculators are not $450, but you hopefully get the picture. The love that she has for her brother and desire to see him be able to study in college compelled her to buy a calculator that financially she should never buy and will have to sacrifice a lot as a result. But that is the type of love that you will see here. Thinking of that almost brought tears to my eyes. We spend $20 a week just on coffee sometimes, which is almost what Yvonne makes in 2 weeks as her salary! My how we are blessed in the states!
Well I think I have typed enough for now. By the way, not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but it is the beginning of the rainy season here and man does it rain. It generally is nice during the day and then in the later afternoon/early evening it just dumps! The nice thing about it is that because all of the roads are dirt it keeps the dust down, but there are some extreme potholes on the roads as a result. Also, I have added a few pictures if you care to check them out. I hope you are all doing well. Thank you for your prayers,
Jon
