Thursday - Hospital and Party

This morning was kind of a sad realization that this was our last morning at the hospital. Thursdays and Fridays are the days that surgeons from around the world come to Coast General, so first thing this morning a group of us headed up to main theater to check out the surgery list. We didn’t really care what the surgery was so we just jumped in on the first one that started. The patient was a man with esophageal cancer. The surgeon operating was a cardiothoracic surgeon, and his plan was to open up the man’s abdomen and attempt to reach the part of the esophagus that needed to be removed by going up through the diaphragm and into the chest cavity. After nearly two hours of searching, the surgeon said that he was unable to find the section of the esophagus and they were going to close him up. That wasn’t the end, however. He was going to keep trying. They stitched up the abdomen and rotated the man so that the surgeon could then attempt to reach the esophagus by going through the side of the chest cavity in between the man’s ribs on his right side. As much as I wanted to see them open up the chest cavity, we had told our driver to be there to pick us up at noon so we had to leave.

            As we are getting ready to walk out the door, Alexa tells me to go peak into casualty. The night before there had been a massacre in Tana River just up the coast from Mombasa. There had been a feud between two tribes over pastureland and water. Warriors attacked the unsuspecting villagers in the early morning hours on Wednesday. In total, they reported that the warriors killed 31 women, 11 children, and 6 men. When I walked into casualty, the doctors were unwrapping the wounds on a woman lying on the bed. Words can’t tell you how horrified I was by what I was about to see. Keep in mind, at this point, nearly a day and a half has gone by since this woman was attacked. She was originally taken to a hospital in Malindi, further north up the coast. She was then transferred here because they didn’t have the medical capabilities to treat her. Not that Coast General is much further ahead. They unwrapped the woman’s head to reveal a four-inch gash on the top of her skull, still wide open, but no longer bleeding. Her entire head seemed lopsided due to the massive swelling around the gash. The doctors continued and my stomach clenched. The woman had been sliced with a machete across her face. From her right ear diagonally across her face, above her lips, to the lower portion of her left cheek. Her upper left jawbone had been broken so badly that it was upside down and her top left molar teeth were sticking out of her face upside down. It was difficult to even make sense of what body parts were supposed to be where. Her lips were intact, but located in the lower left corner of her face now. I just stood there in awe, trying to hold back the tears. Next they went to her right arm and hand, which were also bandaged up. At this point, I was ready for almost anything. She had been sliced open on the inside of her forearm so deep that muscles, tendons, and even bone were showing. Even though they had given her some pain medication, she winced and mumbled as the doctors attempted to pull the bandage out of her wound. It was painful to watch her try to speak because her lips would move, but her mangled jawbone and exposed teeth remained still. Next they moved to her hand wound. Her entire palm had been sliced open on her right hand. From between her thumb and index finger, all the way to the outer corner of her wrist. When they opened it up I could see the bone from her forearm sticking out through the wound. Every tendon in her had had been severed and were visible through the gash. The cut caused her to lose all function of her fingers on that hand. It looked as though she had attempted to grab the blade of the knife. While, it was painful to even look at, it was amazing that the woman was still alive. The doctor informed us that her entire family had been killed in the attack and a stranger had taken her to the hospital.

I had seen about all I could handle, and our ride was waiting outside. All of us made the assumption that they would clean her wounds and then send her for emergency surgery right away. Chris, one of the guys with our group, wants to go into reconstructive dental surgery so he stayed with the hopes that he would get to watch her surgery.

Later that afternoon, Chris came back to the compound frustrated. The doctors had sutured together the wounds that they could, and that was it. She didn’t have money to pay for the surgery so she wouldn’t get it. The surgery costs 6000 Kenyan Shillings: about 71 USD. Omar, one of the doctors we have been working with here, said they would most likely put in a feeding tube since she is unable to eat with the damage to her face.

I apologize for the graphic detail, but even now, as I type it out, the image of this innocent woman lying there burns in my mind. There is nothing more frustrating to me than to have to sit back and watch as absolutely nothing is done to help her. Most of us had a hard time ignoring the fact that it was bothering us that evening.

            After leaving the hospital that afternoon, a group of us wanted to make one more trip to Old Town to enjoy the tourist area of Mombasa once more before we leave. We spent a few hours there before heading back to the compound for dinner. We had a get-together planned for the evening as kind of a going away party. We invited Omar, the doctor from the hospital and the staff from the compound. We had fun sitting around the pool playing cards and talking about how we weren’t quite ready to leave Kenya.