After
a good night’s sleep, we headed to the hospital around 8:30 this morning. Our
little group had decided last night that today we were going to spend most of
our time in maternity. When we got to the Maternity Ward, there were three
emergency C-Sections scheduled, one of which had already begun. We headed up to
the Maternity operating room called Millennium Theatre.
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| Heading into Surgery |
The women in surgery had attempted
to give birth at home, but had begun bleeding too much and came into the
hospital. The doctor explained to us that the Mother was number one, Diabetic,
which was causing many complications on its own, but numbers two, was suffering
from a condition called Placenta Paevia. This condition causes the placenta to
block the birth canal, which is why she needed a C-Section to have the baby.
The condition also cause the placenta to attach to the uterine walls, and
unfortunately, when the surgeon removed the placenta the inner wall of the
uterus came along with it causing much more internal bleeding and left the
uterus too thin to be left alone so the doctor had to remove the woman’s uterus
as well. I felt really bad for the mother because her baby was still born and
she would no longer be able to have children.
The
second operation was much better and went very fast. The woman came in to the
operating room and a baby girl was brought into the world about fifteen minutes
later. It was an absolutely amazing thing to watch. They just reached in and
fished her out! Later we stopped down to the maternity ward to see her. She was
absolutely beautiful!
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| Newborn baby girl |
The
third and final C-Section we watched also went pretty smooth. This mother delivered
a healthy baby boy. What made this one so interesting was that even after the
baby was born, the woman’s uterus was still HUGE. They had to pull the whole
thing out of her abdomen and place it on top of her so that they could see what
they were suturing. It was bigger than a football still!
We
left the Millennium Theatre around 1:15pm and headed down to Minor to meet up
with everyone else. When I got there, they were removing a Lipoma (a fatty
tumor) from a man’s head, which was pretty cool to watch. Just before we left I
dressed a wound on a man’s hand. He had burned the entire top of his hand off
with steam. The wound had to have all of the dead tissue removed and a fresh
bleed had to be created, which took almost an hour and a half. I got him all
bandaged up and he was good to go.
It
was almost 3:00pm when we finally left the hospital and headed back to the
compound for a little afternoon nap. We had talked about going back in tonight
to help out in casualty, but I haven’t quite decided whether or not I am ready
for another night in casualty yet. I will let you know.
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