Monday, October 8, 2007

Today was day one for the medical team, so there was a lot of buzzing and activity really early, like before 6. I got to eat with the group this morning since I did not have to be in the dish room because the Haitian ladies are here Monday through Friday and I don’t want to step on their toes. So after breakfast I helped sort and put away more of the medical stuff that the group brought in. At 9 Melissa, 8 of the people from the teams, and I got a rescue board and went to Sonel’s to load him up and bring him to the mission for his surgeries. I will have pictures of that experience as soon as I can get them from someone that took their camera and was not carrying a teenager on a stretcher. Well we made it there and back again with no issues or incidences, thank the LORD, and Sonel was really excited to get to wheel around the mission and talk with everyone. We were having so much fun that we lost track of the time and were hunted down by people that needed to do his pre-op examination, oops. So it was to the recovery room to wait for his turn for surgery. So I spent the day talking with him and playing with him and with the rest of the people in recovery and learning about the whole process of the medical team. I got to meet a lot of the team also, which I loved as much as playing with the patients. While I was talking with Heidi, one of the recovery assistants, she said that people were able to go into the OR during surgery to watch procedures and I was like, “nice, I am going to see if I can go in during Sonel’s.” Since it was a while before his operation, Carmen told me to ask again closer to the procedure, and I told her that I was going to be in the recovery room until they wheeled him in so she would not miss me. We had a really good time in recovery, with all the people that have been praying for him stopping in to meet him and play with him for a while. He was having the time of his life and loving all the attention, especially from the ladies. ;) So he was supposed to go into surgery at 4 but there was an emergency c-section that came in that had to go first so he did not go in until 7 and I got to go in with him and watch, WOO-HOO. What a new and interesting experience this was and Dr. Dell was so chill about everything and him and Judy explained every step as they were going and answered all kinds of questions. The extents of his sores were unbelievable and it was amazing that both Dell and Judy said they had never seen sores that bad before. The worst sore was about the size of a silver dollar pancake and was about 2 inches deep and indented an inch each way under the skin. All the dead tissue that was cut out was amazing and I am glad that he could not feel anything. Dr. Dell said that next week when he closes the wounds he is only going to have to graft one of the wounds; the rest of them will be able to be closed using their own tissue and skin. After the surgery he was really sedated so Mike, Teresa, Erin and I just said a prayer of thanksgiving for a successful operation and then called it a night in recovery. So I went up to the dining hall with about an hour left of generator time so I sat down to check my email and start my journal and did not get to do either of those things because my computer has become the most popular commodity on campus. After a long day of medical work I decided to go to bed right when they turned off the generator. Peace.