Tenwek Day #11: Our Last Day of Surgery

Today is our last day of surgery at Tenwek.  Our morning open heart was a redo procedure on the little girl I photographed in church on Sunday.  She did very well, but it was a very difficult case to pump from our standpoint.  Hoang and I were able to combine some techniques to return as much of her blood back to her at the end of the procedure as possible to minimize her exposure to blood transfusions. 

Now that we're at the end of our second week our supplies are running low and we have to prioritize what circuits to use for which patients and we were able to find all the meds required to mix up more or our cardioplegia solution (the medication we perfuse into the heart to stop it during cardiopulmonary bypass so the surgeon can operate on a motionless field) to get us through all of our surgeries today.

We ended our day early last night, Luke and I got back to our rooms just before 11:00 pm.  I was able to get a couple of hours of sleep after lunch today because the cases switched around, but we're both exhausted.  I couldn't get an internet connection last night and wasn't able to post anything.  Good thing, there was no time.  We have 3 more open-hearts to do today to finish up our surgery schedule.  It will be a long day.  2 cases per day usually last until 11:00 or 12:00 pm and we have 3 to do.  We're getting the patient into the room this morning at 5:30 am, about 3 hours earlier than usual to try and get the cases finished.  I got to sleep in which I'm thankful for.

I took the picture above last night around 10:00  when we transported our patient to the ICU.  The little boy in the picture was operated on during our 2nd trip to Tenwek in 2009.  A palliative procedure (not the final repair, but a staged procedure to introduce more blood to his pulmonary arteries in order to make them grow so the final corrective procedure can be done at a later date) was done in 2009 and we completed the repair yesterday.  He is doing well.  The parents of our patients are so vigilant and loving, sometimes not eating or sleeping during their childs recovery.  I loved this shot of Dad watching over little Tony while he sleeps.

We will most likely be working through the night until tomorrow morning and I will be leaving for safari hours later, so I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again.  Please keep our team in your prayers as we push through the day to finish all of our pediatric patients here at Tenwek.