This was an incredible day. It began with the girls banding the children for surgery. There is constant attention paid to make sure that we have the right child. There was one child today whose chart I caught with her name misspelled three times and then identifying her as male; lucky catch. Then we moved to preparing the children for surgery, everything from a perfectly cheerful 4-month-old to a 4-year-old who screamed in terror for almost an hour. His mother broke down in tears and we had to lead her away and let someone else try to comfort this child.
The girls observed a bit of surgery today and I moved into the recovery room. One of the little boys I had "prepped" for surgery woke up from the anesthesia and stood up almost immediately screaming for dear life. Took a very long time to comfort him. Then other people tried to relieve me of him, but he would not go to them. Finally I transferred him to the ward in an ambulance and waited with him till his mom got there.
You can just imagine how much these kids hurt. The palate surgery causes a lot of blood, and I now have a SW purple shirt stained a bit on the collar. Most of these kids came out of the anesthesia in horrific pain and crying for long periods of time, often having to be sedated a bit again.
Tomorrow I'm hoping to attend surgery. Someone actually suggested that I do some translating in the OR, but I'm not sure just how good an idea that might be. I do have very good medical terminology in English which translates well in to Spanish, but translating as to exactly which forceps or knife is to be handed over might be a bit dicey. We'll see....
So, it's been quite the day, and a good one. And tomorrow's the last one. We so enjoy this wonderful team we are working with, both American and Mexican. Most of the team is from MSP. There are two individuals from IA and two surgeons and one anesthesiologist from Billings MT.
See you on Thursday.
Stephanie
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