3rd Surgical Day - Wednesday

Wednesday March 19, 2008 11:30 PM

Check out the new photos!

I’m back

Let’s just say that I am feeling much better. Also, I am never eating in a restaurant that has lizards that hang out on the sides of the walls.

To clear something up, I went to the hospital on Tuesday, got three IV’s right away after I threw up four times, and then went back to the hotel. There I slept from about 8:30AM till around seven. The IV’s make you really tired, and make you go to the bathroom a lot. Other than sleeping for eleven hours, I was getting up to go to the bathroom. Today, I am so much better.
The role of the students during mission week is simple. Entertain the kids so they don’t get anxious before their operation. A lot of times we can bring them right to the Operating Room. (I vomited all over my new scrubs yesterday, we threw them out.) On all of the days during surgery week the student team goes out in the afternoon for different things. Yesterday I missed the orphanage so we don’t have photos from that, but I heard it was great. Tomorrow we go to a school for a few hours, and today was the most exciting of all. Today we boarded the van lent to us by the head translator and headed for the 2nd largest dump in all of Southeast Asia. This place is the lowest you could get on the poverty line. Thousands of people actually live on the piles of trash in huts, while you can literally see the toxic fumes coming out of the garbage. There was also a school about 10 yards outside of the dump where we stopped to hand out some small gifts.

The second place we went was the infamous killing fields of the Pol Pot regime. The killing fields were the location of about 20,000 silent killings. The innocent victims were tortured and beaten to death because gunfire would raise suspicion among other citizens. The slayings of the Pol Pot regime are considered by many to be worse than the Holocaust due to the intensity of the deaths. While Hitler gassed his victims, he never tortured women by electrocution, nor did he beat children against trees. The mass graves which were excavated in the 80’s are the big holes in the ground. (See pictures) In the center of the field was a huge monument that contained every single skull that was found on the site. In some spots, the clothes of victims were still visible in the ground.

On the brighter side, some of my favorite patients had surgery today; you can see their after pictures below.


From Margaret –
Things were busy in the medical records department today. We spend 14 hours at the hospital. And, believe it or not, today was the hottest day yet. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. We operated on 31 people today. We have a lot of pictures. The power goes out in the hospital every day between 10 and 11. There are regular power outages every where in the country. So, we have our own generators in the OR to keep the machinery going. Out front in medical records, we make do without. When the fans go off, it gets pretty ugly.

There are many families who have been in the hospital all week – they came together from 500 miles away (almost into Thailand) and several are having surgery all week so they stay in the hospital. One of the boys has been hanging around with us every day. He is 8 years old and has never had his palate closed – his lip was done last year. He will have surgery first thing tomorrow. He is an amazing kid – so happy considering how poor he is and how little he has. He has worn the same clothes all week. He still is wearing his sticker on his shirt that has his number on it so he doesn’t miss out on his surgery. He is number 207. At first they weren’t sure they could operate because his cleft palate is so big. But the team ultimately decided to do it on Thursday. Please pray for him that all goes well.

We had a little trouble with the schedule for tomorrow, so that was why we were so late getting home. We are getting to the end, so we are trying to squeeze everyone in. I am actually posting this on Thursday early in the AM. The Internet wasn’t working last night.

Until later.
M&B