Mary in Malawi

Today I was in the operating theater together with the american surgeon Dr. Phil. I assisted on five operations; 1 removal of malignt melanoma, 1 hernia repair, 1 removal of benign breast tumour , 1 removal of necrotic testicle and 1 open abdomen bowel surgery. The last one was done to make a diagnose, and because we don't have x-ray here they had to cut him open to find a diagnose. Dr. Phil cut open the entire belly, from diafragma down to the root of the penis. 

   I held the bowels, I controlled the suction and I did a lot of swabbing blood from inside the abdomen. Really cool! At one point Dr. Phil accidentally cut of an artery, and the blood  started pumping up in the air, almost all the way up to the roof! I was so glad I had my googles on, cause I got blood all over. Then I had to hold all the intestans away from the ruptured artery so the surgeon could fix it. It was so intresting! I really enjoy seeing, tuching and doing... When I'm coming home, I will SO be a theater nurse (operationssjuksköterska). Wow, to do this things all the time... Amazing!


This is me holding the necrotic testicle we  took out. It is  cut open, and if you can see the yellow stuff, that is necrose. So, basically, it was rottening from inside because of cancer cells cutting off the blood stream to the scrotum.



Me and Dr.Phil! =)

Hmmm I was trying to put up a more pictures, but internet is failing me... =( Maybe I can put up more antoher day! =)

yesterday, we saved the life of a one week old baby boy. We were walking through OPD, talking and planning our projekt, and we were talking about all the patients, especially babies, who dies in line to the hospital, or who dies in the hospital, because noone really takes the time to look at them. Anyway, we were walking in OPD, and when we walked through the admitting room, where the two medical assistents (2 young girls  with about one year of pure traing in how to prescribe medicine)  sits. Their job is to decide if the patient should be admitted, or if they just want to prescribe some meds and send him/her home again. When we walked through their room, one of them were sitting on facebook. The other girl was not even there. And on the table/trolly in the room, a little baby. Completely purple, gasping for air. We just took him and ran up to peadiatrics, gave him oxygene and antibiotics.  The doctor  we were with said that if we hadn't found this baby, he would have been dead within 15 minutes....
 that's just so wrong... We were there by coincedence. thing like that shouln't happen. We will make the emergency department work, we are allready having a lot of plans! =)

Thanks for reading! =)

//Maria