Haiti Mission Trip March 2010

Back to the March 4 blog…

My first case was a 36 year old for a hysterectomy who had very large fibroids, although she believed  she had been pregnant for 5 years. The case became much more exciting when the lights went out (windowless OR=total darkness!). I lit the surgical field with my laryngoscope handle. After that episode, we very quickly located flashlights, which we used throughout the day.

Some of the other interesting cases was what was thought to be large fibroid, but turned out to be a HUGE omental cyst. We also had a man with a hydrocele that contained 3000ml of fliud. It looked like he had a small child on his lap when they wheeled him in in the wheelchair-I’m thinking he’s a lot more comfortable now!

Also put a spinal in a 25 year old young man in the treatment room. After the spinal was in, Dr Kennedy then took over the patient’s care by having EMT monitor the BP with a conventional cuff and ordered ephedrine as needed. I wonder how that would fly at Aurora BayCare?

While we were at work in our room, Dr. Kennedy was excising half of a man’s penis under local anesthesia for cancer and Dr. Vogel was delivering a baby in a treatment room.

We finished our day with a tubal ligation on the patient that Dr. Vogel delivered earlier.

Total cases for the day: 16

Thoughts on the day:

• it was so nice to do pure anesthesia. No paperwork, no ridiculous hoops to jump through.
• we have to give the patients their body parts as they often bury it at home. The surgeons were saying it was pretty strange to make rounds at night and recognize their patients by the uterus sitting on the bed (sse picture below)!

• it only took about an hour for us to stop noticing the bugs flying around the OR
• I had the BEST surgery team in the world. Kathy Cerkas and Audrey Burmeister rocked my world. We were a well-oiled machine. All the surgeons and techs that rotated through our room were great to work with!
• Mike Cerkas and Jamie Fisher are awesome cooks. I don’t know what was my favorite…”Chef’s Surprise” (they said they didn’t even know what was in the course!) or “Jamie & Mike’s Excellent Adventure”! When they were not cooking, they were literally carrying the patients out of the rooms (the carts wouldn’t fit in the door as the mattress was a bed mattress-the cart mattress was stolen after the earthquake), mopping floors (along with the surgeons), or triaging patients (good job Jamie!).
• By the middle of the day it longer bothered us that we were still using the same mop water from the morning. By the end of the day it was worse than swamp water
• Julie Fisher “lost” a hysterectomy patient today-she has no idea where she is!
• They have really ingenious wheelchairs. There is even a place for a bedpan underneath!

• the patients come in the room wearing their (mud-caked) shoes and leave them at the door. I am photographing the shoes and plans to do a collage named “Shoes of Haiti”

• I could not have asked for a better group of people to be on this adventure with!

Time for bed. Oh wait…not yet! Valerie (the PA from Grand Rapids) needs another IV started. By the time is said and done, it is 1:00am

Keep us and the Haitian people in your prayers. Peace out.

Kristi Sarosiek