Sadio's Sedhiou Surgery

So after a late night, Charles (interpetur/photographer) and I went to the hospital here in Sedhiou.  We met again with the new surgeon in town Dr Tangien.  So operating with a interpetur in an Africian operating room outside of the big city is pretty tough, but this experience went so much better than I could have imagined.  Having operated there before, and just operating in Africa in general got me prepared with a few necessities that made all the difference. I had an extremely interesting/intriguing conversation with Dr Tangien over the 2 1/2 hours we operated.

It's still mind blowing to me how little resources and equipment he has to operate with day in and day out.  Dr Tangien was an extremely gracious host and I happily I left him two suit cases full of supplies.  The genuineness of his appreciation and how we both knew I made him a better surgeon for the people of this region with just some basic supplies considered essential in the States was pretty cool.  On to Surgery.

Sadio  (also known by some in US as Keisha) had her hand burned 3 years ago, it was contacted down and barely useable.

Her hand before.

Surgery Pics

So this is what her fingers looked after separated and extended.

Our skin graft site off her upper arm.  I took a really big graft and was little worried and rightly so that I wouldn't be able to get it completely closed.  I used some tricks and got it nearly closed, but she is better off with granulating wound in her upper arm than not enough skin on her contracted fingers.

So onto the finger grafting, lots and lots and lots of little stitches later, it looked awesome.  

Final product, I was really pleased:)

So during surgery, Charlie informed me I got a text from Amy letting me know she had started pulling teeth.  Before I made it out to clinic she had already extracted 3 teeth and was on a tear to pull out more.

Then she was on to teaching the children outside the clinic how to brush so they could keep their teeth and then gave them fluoride treatments.

So again TeVo was operating like a mad man while I was gone.  He was almost injured when the ceiling started falling down on the new roof of this brand new clinic.  So...when they build a new building they use timbers that are rough sawed and one with a big portion of the bark still attached started falling of while he was operating...he and the patient both escaped injury, 

He also told me he was going to do a mastectomy and showed me a picture similar to the below....I was like what, what, what are you doing?????  Let me see first there tough guy!!

Yeah, TeVo thought it was funny the back of this Muslim man's leg looked like a boob, was actually a weird lipoma and of course, he chopped it out.

ATIYIA (strong hot tea)

Still kinda gross, but I'm getting pretty use to it at this point because it tastes so good.  These are the neighborhood boys cooking up some Atiyia to keep us going throughout the day.  Tea is awesome,  but only two glasses to use all week long for several hundred volunteers and patients with no running water or sanitation to speak of, definitely less cool.

Amy's new friends at the end of a long day of clinic!

Lastly for my daughter Grace I made a new Africian dish for her, as an Africian veteran she has an appreciation for missing things from home...

After several days of the same old morning baguette with chocolate/Nutella type spread.  I spiced it up and had a Resses peanut butter cup baguette for breakfast:)

Off to a cold shower after a long day and bed.

-Bi