------Exploratory Surgery------
Interested in coming on a project?
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Turistas
A brief update. Still no pictures,this time just because the mere attempt to upload anything may bring down the entire internet for this city of 1,000,000 plus who probably need it for more important reasons.
Wendy and the girls arrived on Sunday morning and I got some great bear-hugs in the airport before being prompty dragged to Cinnabon. We made it safely to Cochabamba on the 11:00am flight and met up with our friends, the Wolheters. We relaxed at their place for the rest of the afternoon as the girls recovered from aout 36 hours of continuous travel. We took a walk that eveningto a playground that was akin to a small Crossfit gym for kids in the middle of this hilly city. My kids would run around for about 2 minutes, then lay down to recover from the altitude (somewhere around 7,000 feet), before picking themselves up to play some more. They slept well that night.
Monday we travelled to Parqueo Pairumani, a mountain gorge with waterfalls and a fast moving (and very cold) stream that the kids played in for hours - we almost didn´t make the climb because Emma had wilted like a leaf of steamed spinach, but we took turns carrying her up the mountain on our shoulders, and the cool water quickly restored her to her normal, playful self. Pictures are posted in my Facebook album "Pairumani."
Tuesday we went to visit the giant Jesus statue overlooking the city. It was apparently the tallest in the world (even taller than the well-known one in Rio), but rumor has it that Poland has built a bigger Jesus, much to the chagrin of the locals. We took the yellow gondolas up the hill (Emma prefered this to the 1440 steps). Jesus has a great view of the city. You can even go up inside Jesus, but apparently only on weekends. Later, the girls went out for a mani-pedi with the moms and I stayed home and babysat the boys (meaning I read, slept, blogged, sorted through my photos, browsed facebook, and ate some cookies). The adults went out for traditional Bolivian fare on Tuesday night while the kids stayed back and watched Frozen... again.
Wednesday we packed the Land-Cruiser for our trip up the Andes and accross the Altiplano to LaPaz. I played luggage-tetris on the roof before wrapping everything into a blue tarp burrito. We then made a long, curvy, crowded drive topping out at 14,700 feet (Pike´s Peak in CO is 14,115 feet). We took some of the most scenic potty breaks ever. Emma and Tessa both resumed wilted-spinach posture, this time draped all over their longsuffering mother, who took it all like a champ. No one vomited - thanks to God (who worked via a cocktail of dramamine, acetazolamide, benadryl, ibuprofen, caffeine, and Jame´s expert driving). The second half of the drive was accross the arid Altiplano - broad expanses of flat pastureland with flocks of sheep, cows, and llamas attended to by traditionally dressed Aymara women. Towards the end, the snow-peaked tips of the mountains around LaPaz, including Illimani (21,122 feet). We got a view of the city from the plane above (El Alto) before descending to LaPaz (12,000 feet) where we carried the luggage up four stories to our apartment for the week (that was a workout!).
OK, it´s Thursday now - time to take the fam up to Lake Titicaca (and no, I will never get the kids to stop laughing every time we say it). Hasta luego!
Wendy and the girls arrived on Sunday morning and I got some great bear-hugs in the airport before being prompty dragged to Cinnabon. We made it safely to Cochabamba on the 11:00am flight and met up with our friends, the Wolheters. We relaxed at their place for the rest of the afternoon as the girls recovered from aout 36 hours of continuous travel. We took a walk that eveningto a playground that was akin to a small Crossfit gym for kids in the middle of this hilly city. My kids would run around for about 2 minutes, then lay down to recover from the altitude (somewhere around 7,000 feet), before picking themselves up to play some more. They slept well that night.
Monday we travelled to Parqueo Pairumani, a mountain gorge with waterfalls and a fast moving (and very cold) stream that the kids played in for hours - we almost didn´t make the climb because Emma had wilted like a leaf of steamed spinach, but we took turns carrying her up the mountain on our shoulders, and the cool water quickly restored her to her normal, playful self. Pictures are posted in my Facebook album "Pairumani."
Tuesday we went to visit the giant Jesus statue overlooking the city. It was apparently the tallest in the world (even taller than the well-known one in Rio), but rumor has it that Poland has built a bigger Jesus, much to the chagrin of the locals. We took the yellow gondolas up the hill (Emma prefered this to the 1440 steps). Jesus has a great view of the city. You can even go up inside Jesus, but apparently only on weekends. Later, the girls went out for a mani-pedi with the moms and I stayed home and babysat the boys (meaning I read, slept, blogged, sorted through my photos, browsed facebook, and ate some cookies). The adults went out for traditional Bolivian fare on Tuesday night while the kids stayed back and watched Frozen... again.
Wednesday we packed the Land-Cruiser for our trip up the Andes and accross the Altiplano to LaPaz. I played luggage-tetris on the roof before wrapping everything into a blue tarp burrito. We then made a long, curvy, crowded drive topping out at 14,700 feet (Pike´s Peak in CO is 14,115 feet). We took some of the most scenic potty breaks ever. Emma and Tessa both resumed wilted-spinach posture, this time draped all over their longsuffering mother, who took it all like a champ. No one vomited - thanks to God (who worked via a cocktail of dramamine, acetazolamide, benadryl, ibuprofen, caffeine, and Jame´s expert driving). The second half of the drive was accross the arid Altiplano - broad expanses of flat pastureland with flocks of sheep, cows, and llamas attended to by traditionally dressed Aymara women. Towards the end, the snow-peaked tips of the mountains around LaPaz, including Illimani (21,122 feet). We got a view of the city from the plane above (El Alto) before descending to LaPaz (12,000 feet) where we carried the luggage up four stories to our apartment for the week (that was a workout!).
OK, it´s Thursday now - time to take the fam up to Lake Titicaca (and no, I will never get the kids to stop laughing every time we say it). Hasta luego!
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
The ones I didn't take
Why doesn't this blog have any pictures?
Photography
has long been my hobby – I used to take hundreds of photos at a time, even in
the film era (what’s film? The kids
sometimes ask.). Once things went
digital, I would take thousands. At
first, I would mostly shoot landscapes – probably because I was shooting with a
manual-focus, manual-metered camera and landscapes don’t tend to move all that
much. For the most part, I stayed away
from people pictures much for this reason.
The best ones are candid, un-posed, and I simply couldn’t focus and
meter fast enough to catch an unscripted expression worthy of an exposure. Once I entered the autofocus, auto-metering,
digital era, taking good photographs of people became much more feasible.
And so
I did – lots of them – especially on mission projects. There were so many memories I wished to
crystallize – unique faces bearing the full range of human emotion and
experience, and largely without the option or even the propensity to conceal
themselves with makeup or even contrived expressions. Every eye, every wrinkle seemed to tell a
story, the ethos of which I might capture if I took a picture or ten. I would look back at these often, even
hanging some on my walls at home. Often,
they would release a flood of memories, indistinct and mostly visceral, of the
emotions, even the smells I had encountered.
The pictures I took appeared to be serving their purpose.
After a
few more projects, I noticed that I was taking fewer and fewer pictures. I would get home and have a chance to page
through them and would find myself disappointed – where were those faces so
worthy of a LIFE magazine cover? How was
I to remember? I even found myself
swallowing my photographic pride and emailing other trip participants to get
copies of the pictures they had taken.
Why was
this happening? The reason is likely
multifactorial. At a very simple level,
my hands were always busy doing something else.
My mind was also distracted by all the other small tasks that needed to
be done to keep a project moving. I had little
down-time to seek out the perfect shot. I was also going places for the second and
third time – the newness was waning and with it my shutterbug tendencies.
There
were other reasons as well – I would discover, trip after less-photographed
trip, that the quality of my memories was not fading as I had feared. In fact, they were improving in ways. Faces were replaced by people. Story-laden wrinkles gave way to actual
stories. No longer a camera between us,
the nature of my interactions with people deepened.
Psychologists
refer to the Hawthorne effect – “a form of reactivity in which subjects modify an aspect of their
behavior in response to the fact that they know that they are being studied.” I’m sure you’ve seen it – smiles become
forced, tears are not allowed to linger, and unacceptable emotions find a place
to hide until the shutter snaps. In
short, the process of taking the photograph changes what is being photographed,
sometimes completely eliminating it.
Sure, the person is still there, but the moment one had hoped to capture
is gone without a trace. The memory
preserved is a shiny, plastic replica while the genuine article has begun to
fade.
There were many
snapshots I had hoped to take on this project, but didn’t.
-
The
forlorn, lonely face of our young, pregnant patient before her appendectomy.
-
The
abject fear of a toddler being taken to the OR, to be sequentially replaced by
exhaustion, resignation, trust, and calm as he is sung to sleep by the anthesia
crew.
-
The
hilarious and uninhibited grin of a man under mild sedation as he tried to
teach us Spanish during his hernia repair.
-
The collective
smiles and laughter of a sweaty ward of inpatients as they suffer through our
Spanglish.
-
The
tired yet willing faces of the OR instrument crew as they agreed to stay late “uno
mas” time on behalf of a suffering patient.
-
The
exhausted, yet satisfied repose of our Bolivian and North American volunteers
as they sacrificed sleep and comfort to do what God called them to do, some for
the first time in this capacity.
I didn’t take these snapshots, or maybe I did. Much thanks to all of you who have helped in
any way to make these memories.
Hopefully you’ve shared in them to some extent through the blog. Better yet, consider coming along
sometime. Bring your camera, but don’t
use it too much.
Now the project is over, and I’m a tourist this week. Let the cameras roll and the shutters fly.
-Matt
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Uno mas
It has
been a very busy few days. We ran out of
internet credit on Tuesday and didn’t really get sustained access until
returning to Santa Cruz last night (Friday).
Hence the infrequency of updates.
Now, there is so much to reflect and report upon that I don’t know where
to start. I guess I’ll give the story
of a day that typifies these projects.
Monday
and Tuesday had gone quite well. We had
managed to pull off 10 major procedures in two days and had functioned quite
well as a team right from the start.
Everyone knew their respective roles and embraced them, yet remained
flexible enough to encourage and assist their teammates. It was good, hard work, but the days were both
long – we got back to the hotel around 8:00pm both times. I knew that Wednesday would present a
challenge as fatigue starts to set in, mosquito bites accumulate, intestinal
issues become manifest, and the initial adrenaline rush starts to wane. Additionally, we would have Yessica Pardo, a
gynecologist from Santa Cruz joining us, hoping to do a few procedures of her
own. We would be hiring the services of
Ulices, the local anesthesiologist (he has worked with us many times here and
in Santa Rosa). At the outset, the
scheduled plan was to do at least 7 procedures and we had promised the local
staff that we would try to finish by 5:00.
The
team was somewhat Zombie-like at breakfast – but they were happy looking
zombies and I decided to take the risk and caffeinate them. Paola gave the team devotion with her ever
improving English. Franz, Yessica, and I
pieced together a proposed OR schedule on the bus before running it past Klatt
for his perusal – he made some valuable suggestions which might make things
more efficient and keep us eager-beaver surgeons grounded in reality. We pulled into the hospital grounds around
8:00 –a crowd was already starting to accumulate under the shade trees, under
the entrance portico, at the door of our supply room, and in blue plastic
chairs that made up the (very busy) optometry clinic.
Everyone
went about their tasks without any need for instruction. Dorothy and I rounded on the 4 or 5
inpatients that we had accumulated (mostly gallbladder resections and spinal
anesthesia patients who stayed the night waiting to urinate). The Anesthesia trio gathered their supplies
for the day and made their first preop assessment. Elaine (functioning as our circulator) packed
the blue duffel with supplies for every OR contingency. I would run back and forth from the OR to the
supply room pulling suture and mesh for the day’s cases. Things were running smoothly.
In this
flurry of activity preceding the day’s first case, I was frequently stopped by
the waiting patients who would speak to me, unfortunately in Spanish. Some were expressing thanks or asking
questions about relatives who had undergone surgery and were back in the
wards. Others were asking to be seen in
consult or to have surgery (our schedule was already more than filled for the
week). I would try patiently to sort out
the difference, usually going to find one of our Bolivian team members to
translate. On more than one occasion, we
would agree to see the patient in consult and make an attempt to wedge in “uno
mas” operation into the already overflowing schedule. My
heart would get a bit heavy. Faced with
the reality of how quickly we can do safe work, I knew these concessions were
likely to result either in a disappointed OR staff (working late hours in spite
of our promised attempt at an early finish) or in a disappointed patient who’s operation
may be postponed until next year.
The day got rolling and was moving along at the pace I had
hoped for. Hannah and Erica (CRNA)
students have essentially turned Dr. Klatt into a 6-armed anesthesiologist,
making for fast turnover between cases.
Dorothy functioned like a well-oiled machine in the recovery room/ ward
allowing me to stay in the OR and move things along there. (She become the talk of the whole hospital as
she was able to demonstrate incredible patience, compassion, and attention to detail throughout
long days, in a 90 degree, 98% humidity room full of sweaty, needy
patients. She was a (very sweaty) sight
to behold.
The
procedures themselves were blessed with very little bleeding – Paola and Wesley
(an intern from Brazil) both made for capable and enthusiastic first assistants
who were able to anticipate my subsequent steps – open gallbladders were taking
less than an hour and I was able to leave incision closure to them as both have
demonstrated proficiency and increasing speed.
In the end, we would complete eight operations on two tables and have
the last patient in the recovery room by 5:10pm. It was the perfect day – we might even get to
walk into San Carlos for ice-cream and enjoy some of the local culture. Then…
Uno mas
“Doctor,
can you come see a patient?” – It was the local obstetrician asking.
She is 17
years old. 14 weeks pregnant. Feverish, nauseated, and in pain for the last
24 hours. She had a long, forlorn face
bereft of any “pregnancy weight.” She
could barely speak, but her dark, hollow eyes were themselves a plea for
help. Her husband and family had all
left for their homes – at least 3 hours away by motorcycle. They have cellphones, but live far beyond the
edge of the grid. They could not be
reached. I pressed gently on the right
lower quadrant of her abdomen and the lethargic girl somehow managed the
strength to recoil and push my hand away.
She had appendicitis. The rest of
her abdomen was soft, indicating that it had likely not ruptured yet. She would need surgery, and soon.
In
Bolivia, it is almost unthinkable to take a minor to the operating room without
consent from her parents, or to take a married woman without the participation
of her husband in the decision making process.
Family is valued over autonomy, maybe even over safety. I sought advice from the local hospital staff
and from Franz and Yessica as the OR team (without even a hint of complaint)
set up for the case (we had already packed up for the night). We got approval from the hospital director,
the local gynecologist, as well as myself – hopefully the family would be in
agreement whenever they would arrive.
The patient herself consented, at least feeling the urgency if not quite understanding it.
We made
incision around 6:00pm. The appendix was
massive, gangrenous down to its base, but hadn’t ruptured. Had it done so, she would have developed
severe peritonitis for sure. We had
operated in time – tomorrow would have been a different story. In the recovery room, she looked more
comfortable immediately after anesthesia had worn off, although she was still
weak and dehydrated. She would continue
to recover well. Her family could still
not be reached when we left on Friday afternoon.
Though she was feeling and looking better, I still couldn'tt provoke a smile as I am usually able to do with most our patients. We gave her some food (families usually provide the food for the pateints) and turned her care over to the local staff before we boarded the bus. We pray her family will return soon and that she will thrive through the remainder of her pregnancy.
The days on these projects can be long. What should have been the shortest one turned out to be the longest. I will confess to a moment of self-centered exasperation when confronted with that softly spoken "uno mas." To be honest, they were the last words that I wanted to hear. We were ten minutes from leaving for the day. But that was when she was given to us. Had we left for the hotel, the standard practice would have been to transfer
the patient to Santa Cruz (they usually do not call us with many night-time emergencies). This transfer however would likely not have been carried out without her family’s
approval. I think she would have gone
septic by morning and lost the pregnancy at a minimum, maybe worse.
Often times, the words we least want to hear are the ones we most need to. Thank God for "uno mas."
Monday, April 7, 2014
Expectations
I’ll start by quoting a song:
Novices
have expectationsbecause they think they should.
Experts have their revelations
Like they knew they would.
The name of the song is “Trouble” (Artist: Over the Rhine, Album: Trumpet Child
– Buy it, you’ll love it). Now I don’t
yet fancy myself an expert at this stuff, but I’m not a novice either. Given the choice however, I felt duty bound
to have at least some expectation of what we could do on Monday. So call me a novice still.
If you
read yesterday’s post, you know I went into Monday with the hope of pulling off
five cases. I don’t know why I thought
this would be possible – on most my past projects we have not even made
incision on the first case before lunch -
there are still machines to set up, supplies to organize and sterilize,
processes to iron out, and all this with a new team, a language barrier. Some of our team only arrived last night
after 40 net hours of travel, including missed connections in Mexico and
Peru. We have 6 North Americans and 9
Bolivians [this includes our cook and our bus driver] – all this for a combined
Surgical, Medical, and Optometry project.
I should be happy just to fix one or two navels.
We
arrived at the hospital to see quite a crowd gathering. The lobby already smells of sweat and sounds
like a collective toddler melt-down. The
line goes far out the door. Today will
be all about multi-tasking for me as I try to see a bulk of the week’s surgical
consults, fill out the schedule, and also make sure the first cases get going
safely and that everyone else is settling into their roles (some of which have
yet to be defined). It helps that this
is project #3 for Dr. Klatt (anesthesia) and #2 for Dorothy (preop/ postop
nurse) – they are proactive, organized, and flexible. Dorothy’s sister Elaine is here on her first
project and really helped glue processes together as combined ciruclator and
patient communicator of our needs to the local staff (I think she secretly speaks
Spanish).
It’s late,
so I’ll cut to the chase (no surgical pun intended). I’m not sure how it happened but I’m pretty
sure who was behind it. We managed to
pull off five cases (two open gallbladders, two hernias, and a large scalp
mass/ cyst) with the first case starting at 10:00am. Between them, I managed to see 20
consults. None of them spoke English and
I still don’t speak Spanish. The Clinic
team (with two Bolivian doctors – Franz and Alex) saw ~60 patients. Most of them also received integrated health
counselling and spiritual support and encouragement as well. The eye team did 55 exams, including giving
them their glasses. And everyone even ate lunch. The patients are doing well so far and the
team is in very good spirits, especially given how hard they worked. Everyone is primed for tomorrow (and I’m
pretty sure they’re all in bed too).
Feel
free to read my previous posts about project Mondays. They usually make inefficiency an art form
and always manage to bring me to my knees.
I proactively went there today. I’ll
admit to feeling a bit of pressure and isolation on this project – this is my
first one as sole surgeon, and it’s my smallest team yet. Should I really try to do so much on the
first day? How many operations should we
schedule for the week? How hard can/
should the team work? How hard and late
will the local staff work before they go on strike? What if we take on too much and have to break
promises to patients who have waited months for their operation? I’ll admit to both fear and guilt in even
having expecations. I gave this over to
God this morning – His message back came out of Psalm 28:13-14
“I believe that I shall look upon
the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.”
When something is repeated in Scripture, it is usually to
highlight both its importance as well as our tendency to overlook it. What was repeated this time? “Wait for the Lord.” But I’m a surgeon. I hate waiting. Waiting is time wasted. Waiting is inefficiency. The one place I almost never go at work or on
project is called the “waiting room” – I do not belong there. But there it is – “Wait for the Lord.” It was as if He was telling me to make Him my
expectation.
He made
good on this message – both to me and to everyone else. Any slow-downs were reflexively taken as
opportunities to do something else productive or to enjoy a relaxed word or
smile with our patients, their families, or our co-laborers. And everything got done. We set our expectations on God showing up and
He did just that, cloaked of course in the garb of our patients, co-laborers,
and the agape-space between them.
Now bring
on Tuesday. Hasta Manana.
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