Today was the first day of surgery! It was supposed to be on Tuesday but things can get a bit crazy when the minister of health decided to visit the day before you are supposed to open. We had to push the first surgical day back a couple days but it did give us more time to continue screening the mass of women we have staying out in the village.
I have enjoyed the clinic days. Two days a week we will have the clinic open so we can screen any women which have arrived and are waiting to see the doctor. We started by seeing any new women, those who have not had surgery here before, then moved on to those who have had surgery and need more help. I love seeing the women come back, those I have known from previous trips being here. One woman came in, basically to just say hello. She sat on the exam table and started talking and talking and talking and even though I couldn’t understand her verbal language, her body language said it all as she would get angry faces and pretend to spit and then smile. She was telling us that before the surgery, people would spit on her and avoid her and now she has found a new husband and people don’t spit on her anymore. She lives very close to here so I’m hoping to see her again. Another woman who I knew from before came in. She sat on the exam table and was completely wet. I knew what was coming, what the doctor was going to say, so I stood a bit behind her so she couldn’t see my face. I then had to leave the room because I couldn’t stop crying. The women who I know from before, I see them as my friends. I want the best for them, for all of them, but sometimes we are just about at the end of what we can do to heal them. I stood on the other side of the door and listened as the surgeon explained options to her, none of which are easy.
This morning we came to the hospital early to collect the three women from the village who would have surgery today. Today was a day of learning, to say the least. Everything from bathing to eating to handovers to making beds, everything was a first for here. To try and make this a place that will last and to do it well, you have to analyze every little thing. Why did it take over an hour for three women to bathe and have a sitz bath? Oh, the many reasons, but next week it will be easier. How do we get food from the kitchen to the patients? How can we change the beds so we aren’t constantly hitting our heads on the mosquito net frames? Ashley and I were sitting tonight talking about all the many things on our long lists of things to do and fix and review and none of them are bad. They are just things to have to work through and find answers to. All part of opening a 42 bed hospital.
I am sitting in the nurse’s station right now. It’s almost 10:30 at night and the three patients are tucked in, sleeping. Day shift. Night shift. How to make this work as well? The women were all asleep when I tucked their mosquito nets around them. I felt like a mother tucking in her kids. Before they fell asleep, two of the patients were laying in their beds facing each other, talking. Ashley and I were sitting in here wondering what they were talking about. I was mentioning things my friends and I would talk about when we would spend the night at each others houses and what we would say when we first turned the light off (Bridget). Ashley said they were talking about if they would be going back to their husbands now. Who knows what they were saying to each other, but they were super cute lying there in a stark white bed frame with a blue sheet on their bed. Each of them with their catheter so tonight they are dry.
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