Monday 24 March 2025
Team 850
Today, Fr. Chris and I focused on the pre-op patients. We got the opportunity to talk with some of them as they were waiting to go into surgery. Some were clearly a bit nervous, but one cheerful twenty year-old, Randal was all smiles as he told us about traveling seven hours on two buses with his mom to get to Antigua. He heard about Faith In Practice by word of mouth, and he and his mom are staying in Casa de Fe, the hostel provided by Faith In Practice for out of town patients and their accompanying family members. Dr. Michael Johnson will be lengthening Randal’s left achilles tendon to repair a congenital defect.
Dr. Ed Yang stopped by to make sure we took note of the courtesy shown by Dr. Johnson to CRNA Holly Lee. Holly needed a lead apron to wear while monitoring her patient during surgery, as the teams do X-rays throughout. Dr. Johnson went to get her the apron, which would be an unheard-of gesture by a surgeon in the U.S. hospital environment.
We saw patients of Dr. Dawson’s from yesterday’s triage: Lilian, who traveled a dozen hours from Petén by bus, alone, for surgery on her left leg, which was injured eight years ago in a car accident and has been causing her a lot of pain. She is forty-four years old and is mother of seven children. We also talked to Angela, a 45 year-old whose left leg presented with exposed hardware from a motorcycle accident three years ago. And there was Daniel, who is last on the schedule in that room because his deep femur infection will require the OR be specially disinfected after his case.
One case has been canceled from yesterday’s list: a patient who was admitted to the Obras last week with fever. The in-house doctor flagged this patient to the team, so he couldn’t be operated on today. Instead, Elva, a 38 year-old with bright red hair was able to take his spot in the schedule. She is in a wheelchair and needs a revision, that is, a redo of the total knee replacement that a local hospital did two years ago. For anesthesia she will get a sedative with a spinal, and a nerve block that will control pain for about 18 hours post-op, as well as oral meds.
Total cases today: 4 trauma (Dr. Jack Dawson); 4 hip replacements (Dr. Kate Cahill); 9 knee replacements (Dr. Brock Howell and Dr. Matthew Nies); 3 ankles (Dr. Michael Johnson)
Courtney Kim, Team Blogger
