8 – 12 Feb 2010
Welcome to the OR!
well, one of our 2 rooms, anyway. This is the smaller of the rooms, and is where most of the cases I’ll be doing will go (the other room is bigger so we’ll use it for mainly ortho cases, and I’m not as well-versed in that instrumentation).
We mostly left our gear in the bags Turner had so carefully packed 1) to keep our supplies off the floor and 2) so that everything had a home and we would know where to find what we brought:
though Turner did have to go supply hunting on a not-so-OSHA-approved ladder for some gear left on previous trip.
We tested out the defib in PACU:
and Cindy set up for our first case!
I was mostly a gopher on the first day, since we actually have a few people in the group who can scrub, running for supplies and taking fun pictures 🙂
(if you’re squeamish about blood, maybe now is a good time to skip to the end of the page, though most of these pictures are carefully edited to avoid any gore and/or identifying patient information)
Our laparoscopic equipment is definitely first, maybe second, generation:
not the most amazing picture, but good enough to get the job done, especially since cameras were in short supply, so while the one we used was being washed, this is how we had to do cystos:
I worked mostly in the general/urology room:
Fixing a hernia, I believe:
When the overhead lights and headlights weren’t quite strong enough, we brought in this free-standing light, which actually worked quite well!
I got in on the action eventually as well:
Most of the cases I scrubbed were either gallbladders or hernias- basic general cases that I was comfortable with, but occasionally, we’d get something weird. I usually let Cindy or Turner take those, as they’re actually trained for this, but I learned a lot this week- about improvising and using what you have and just making things work. We have limited supplies and tools, sometimes we don’t have what we need, so you have to get a bit creative.
That was the case with this patient:
They had been burned as a youth, and their arm was severely scarred and contractured and basically unusable. Brent here made a series of z-plasties to straighten the arm and hopefully, as it heals, they can regain some use of this arm. Definitely not something I had ever seen before (and honestly, probably won’t see again- my hospital doesn’t really do burn patients), but a very interesting case none the less.
On a lighter note, it’s Carnaval this week here in Ecuador, which includes water fights, so occasionally, someone in clinic would get dowsed in water 🙂
Most days, we headed to the OR right after breakfast and operated straight on through til dinner, or later. When we ate at our hotel, they’d just save some food for us and we’d eat whenever we finished for the day, but we did make sure to go out for dinner as a group:
I can’t explain what happened with this picture, but I kinda love it!
Leslie’s meal came with the cutest tiny tortillas!
The resemblance is uncanny:
Hand size- Brent vs Cindy:
Also, this restaurant had some interesting stone work:
Those are vertebrae… not sure what animal they came from but definitely unique!