Bere Chad. Miah Davis

Dear reader,

My name is Miah Davis. I am 17 years old, and am graduating high school in June of 2024. I shall be attending Walla Walla University to take either medical or nursing prerequisites, and aspire to be either a CRNA or anesthesiologist someday. 

I was granted an opportunity to go to Bèrè, Chad as part of a medical mission trip team. I embarked on the journey with no expectations really, but I gradually became astonished by the rusticity of Bèrè Adventist Hospital. When I first walked into the various wards—maternity, pediatrics, adult, surgical—the simple spaces were not a surprise. It was not until I went on rounds and spent many hours in the operating room (OR) over the next few days that I realized two things: 1) how lucky I, as an American, am to live in a country with such advanced health care and 2) how great of a God I believe in. 

I have heard many people in the US complain about the cost of healthcare, whether that be the cost of birthing in a hospital, attaining cancer treatment, or getting insulin needed to survive with diabetes. I do agree that such things are dreadfully overpriced in the US, but I have now seen a place without them. In the US, there is consistent pre-natal care and multiple options for a safe birth, In Bèrè, birthing mothers can only be monitored, given epidurals, and taken in for c-sections. Sometimes the beds the women give birth on break during labor. Cancer treatment is surgery, and if surgery cannot get rid of it, there is nothing more the doctors can do. Diabetics are given a syringe and enough insulin to last a month. At the end of the month, the individual comes for a refill and a replacement of the now very dull syringe needle. Therefore, despite the hardships, I think that US residents should be more grateful for the medical technology it has. 

In the US, sanitation and privacy are highly valued. The Bèrè wards, excluding the OR, contain beds lining the walls, no privacy anywhere. There are curtains for doors, and concrete floors. Doctors and nurses do most of the physical exams without gloves to preserve the limited supply of gloves for the cases that truly require them. 

The Bèrè OR is the most basic an OR can be. Patients have consults in the OR waiting area, and do post-surgery stuff in a partially partitioned off space behind the waiting area. The two operating rooms are the two rooms in the entire hospital compound to have air conditioning despite the extreme heat (at least to us Americans). Unlike the US OR’s and their seamless floors and positive pressure, the OR floor not only has atmospheric pressure and seams, but there are also holes and bloodstains on the floor. The anesthesia machine only relays blood pressure and heart rate. It does not show the telemetry or the information from the cardiac monitor. There are often up to 10 aspiring nurses crowded into the room during an operation trying to learn. IV’s and syringes are reused, and fluid is often transferred from non-sanitary to sanitary syringes. Glove fingers are used as drainage capsules. Surgeons from the US will often ask for a certain tool only to be told that the hospital does not have one. Scrubbing down for surgeries is taken very seriously, but I am sure many US doctors would still gasp in horror. 

I have seen many patients here in Bèrè with afflictions—typhoid, abscesses from dental infections, malaria, etc—that are virtually non existent in the US. I have been able to observe, and assist in surgeries that teach me so much about the human anatomy. I have experienced what it is like to not have advanced medicine like the US does. Most of all, I have seen the human body and its interworking parts in ways that only further solidify my belief in God Our Creator. The body heals wounds, protects against internal foreign objects, and recovers from surgical procedures. In my mind, this can not be in accident. It is a beautiful masterpiece of God’s craftsmanship. 

This trip has been life changing. The people here—locals, missionaries, and OR staff—have found their way into my heart, and I am so grateful that I have the chance to spend two weeks in Bèrè, Chad. 

Sincerely,

Miah Davis

Bere Chad 2024 #5

The boy is about 22 yo and I saw him yesterday afternoon and they were thinking of adding him on since we appeared to be done a little early.  He had a hemangioma (mass of large blood vessels) on his inner thing that was about 4×10 inches.  Some of the blood vessels were as large as my fingers.  i said he should be the first case in the morning as it could be very hard to do.  So this morning is the day.  I ask him about how long this has been there as he lays on the OR table.  It been present since birth and has slowly grown larger and larger.  He says it hurts.  I can imagine if it grew quickly it would hurt but not at a slow progression.  That matter not- Im taking it off today.  I scrub with one of the local docs who is doing surgery learning for 6 months.  I start cutting around it and right away get into a few vessels.  This gets my heart rate going.  im trying to explain how he can help me and im finding it challenging.  He isn’t really a good assistant.  I need someone who knows what they’re doing.  Dr. Steven comes in to check on me and I ask him to help.  Then it goes much better.  We are able to go back and forth whichever of us has an easier angle to dissect and the other of us cuts with cautery or ties a small vessel.  We slowly peel it up including the underlying fascia or just above that.  We finally define that it only had two small feeding veins.  These were tied and it is off.  Now how to close.  I pull on the skin and realize I may be able to get it together with a lot of tension.  So I start in the middle with a stitch, then in-between with more stitches.  Until with about 30 stitches it all comes together.  I’m glad to have gotten it together.

I do another surgery and then the third one is interesting too.  This kid of about 8, had an infection going on in his leg for the past 8 months.  It was painful and it had some draining pus that came out in different areas.  The X-ray showed osteomyelitis (infected bone).  This looked like a huge fat bone in the leg at least twice the size of a normal tibia bone.  So i took him to the OR to drain it.  I cut down to the involucrum (new bone growth around a dead piece of bone (sequestrum).  I follow one of the holes that has pus coming out of it and find the hole in the involucrum.  I use a rongur to eat the hole away till it’s very wide.  I probe inside the bone in both directions.  I get a lot of granulation tissue but not any dead bone.  I follow another in the upper tibia and do the same thing.  In that one I find a small piece of bone.  It feels slightly mobile.  I wiggle and try to pull on it.  I think this is likely the sequestrum.  I bite it in half with the rongur.  Then one end I grab and am able to wiggle and twist it free.  Yep it’s a sequestrum in the dead bone inside.  The other end slides up into the top of the tibia.  I use a curette and try to swipe it out.  Finally i get a hold of it.  It doesn’t want to come out, but with force it does.  So at least two chunks of dead bone, the source of all this pus is out!  i hope there isn’t more, but I can’f find more so i pack the holes down the center of the marrow after washing it with dilute bleach solution.  He will likely be here months with packing his legs.

Bere Chad 2024 #4

Today was a “normal” day.  It rained heavily last night and it is finally cooler and I slept finally after about 3 days of minimal sleep.  I get up about 7:30 and realize Ive already missed worship.  I have my own usual morning worship- consisting of reading from the Bible, praying to God.  I head in to see what’s happening and if any patients are ready to have their operation done.  I know there are at least two hysterectomies on the schedule and the others on the list didn’t register so I guess they weren’t worrisome to me.  The first lady is older and has a painful mass in her lower abdomen.  I examine her belly as shes on the operating table, IV in place.  Her head is covered over the top and her abdomen and chest are exposed and she has some shorts on.  So she feels not well covered but acceptably covered considering shes here.  Womens chest and abdomens aren’t usually terribly private.  A child will pull a breast out of their moms shirt and start sucking.  So i palpate and Im told shes here for a hysterectomy.  She doesn’t want any more children.  I look at her book and it says she would like to keep her uterus if possible but wants the mass gone.  As it is almost up to her umbilicus I know Ill do a vertical incision.

At her operation in a few minutes after seeing some consults outside, I incise her abdomen up and down.   Then into the abdomen we see the uterus is huge.  I feel around and cant feel any uterine fibroids.  So I guess I cant do a fibroidectomy, so a hysterectomy it is.  Dr Steven and I are working together.  So he works down one side and I work down the other.  We get into some bleeding that we are able to control and we get down to the cervix and then take out the uterus.   It looks about the size of a small bowling ball.  Im sure she will feel better with this out.  There is definitely more space in her abdomen!

Next is a younger woman in her 30s who has an ovarian tumor.  She definitely wants more children.  She has had 4 and and only 2 are living, and hasn’t had any for the last 4 years.  Womens value in the local cultures are very tied to how many children they have.  So i want to take the ovary, both to help her live longer and so that she still has a chance to have children like she wants.  I palpate her abdomen and then get my butterfly to see it for myself.  Apparently there was some confusion wether the mass was in the ovary or uterus.  I see a large mass and then a small uterus behind.  I open her thin abdomen and start exploring with my fingers.  It seems the intestines are stuck to the mass all over.  This is a bad sign, more likely to be cancerous.   I slowly dissect some off an Dr Steven dissects other parts off.  Then we get into a cystic area somewhere deep inside.  A dark bloody fluid comes out. We dissect more and find that we end up getting two large cysts.  Then there is a large mass below that is really stuck to the rectum and bladder and i feel we cannot get down to the uterus.  We are bleeding and leaving cyst wall stuck to intestine.  So if this is cancer, there is definitely not a cure here.  And with us dissecting the bladder and rectum the chance of injuring these and blood vessels is very high.  So i tell Dr Steven i think its time to stop and get out, that we are not helping any more.  After assessing it again he agrees and we drain and start closing.  We are both bummed that we couldn’t get it out safely.  But Im also glad to not be threatening her lift TODAY.

I go out and see some more surgical consults as they get the next US proportioned guy ready.  Everyone here is very thin, and this guy isn’t.  He has a mass on the back of his leg, and it is likely a sarcoma.  These need to be removed with a good margin of normal tissue around them.  The anesthetist Phillipe, puts in the spinal and after a number of minutes have past we get 8 people around him to turn him on his side.  His big belly starts to drape off the side of the narrow OR table, so we reposition and prop him so that he is safely on his side and then we are able to work on the back of his lower leg.  I want a centimeter of normal tissue around the tumor.  Now this sounds easy, just measure and cut 1cm further.  Yes that is easy at the skin, once you are deeper it’s harder to be certain that your are one cm away.  To be certain you’d have to cut down to it and then go back a cm to make sure you have it.  But that violates the purpose of staying away that far in being beyond tumor that is microscopic spread.  So it ends up being a feel of how much tissue is between my finger and the cancer.  So i end up cutting a large hole out of the back of his leg down into the muscle.  So after removing it, the spot is about the size of half an orange.  There is not near enough laxity of the surrounding skin to get it any where near back together.  So I can skin graft it or leave it open.  Skin grafting covers this large divot with skin and it will forever look like a large divot.  Or I can leave it open and in about 3 months it will be flat and covered with skin.  So I leave a large hole in the back of his leg for Gods design to take over and heal it.

The next guy I operate on is the guy I referenced a couple days ago that has epilepsy and fell in the fire and burned his toes on his left foot, well the three middle ones, and also burned the top/side of his head.  He has exposed skull that will not heal and cannot be skin grafted, and three toes that are floppy and have bone sticking out of one.  So in the operating room I slowly remove the three toes that need to come off and then I get to the interesting part, the skull.  There is a patch of about 3x5inches that is exposed.  Since this won’t heal the solution is to remove the outer table of the skull and leave the marrow to granulate.  So after prepping the head I get the drill and drill multiple small holes in the outer skull.  Then I use a rongour to nibble off the bone between the holes.  One hole drills quickly and a get a constant squirt of dark blood coming out about 5 inches.  Oh no, did I hit the cavernous sinus, a large vein just above the brain?  I hold pressure for a few minutes and every time i let go the same stream is there.  Dr. Steven has the idea of taking the bone shavings and shove them into the hole, so I do that and we hold pressure and continue work.  This eventually works and we finish up removing the outer skull.  Later that night I check on him before going to bed and and he is not bleeding and he is laying flat and i get him with head up like I want and head to bed.

It’s been a good interesting day.

Bere Chad #3

Bere 2024 #3

Warning graphic!!

Ohhh, Noooo!  I walk into the preop/recovery room and Dr. Steven is looking at a guy laying on his stomach.  It appears like the mans anus exploded!  what happpenneddd?  He was riding a bike yesterday when he fell of and the pedal went into his anus.  It looks aweful with loose tissue hanging all over.  he has a urine catheter that has blood in it.  I see Dr. Stevens examination and its clear there are more than one hole and its kind of difficult to see what is actually the anus into the rectum.  So we decide to do the hystorectomy case that is already in the OR ready then we will do this guy.

The hystorectomy is the third case of the day.  We did a mastecomy first on a lady with inflammatory breast cancer which is considered pallatative- not for cure but to give her a better life for a little while.  I was able to remove the breast and get some enlarged lymph nodes out of her axilla (arm pit).  It was a bit snug getting her skin back together, but was able to do it.  And i left a piece of glove at the bottom to come out as a drain.  

The next lady had a mass in the pelvis that a previous doctor had thought was uterine in nature.  So we took her to the operating room to attempt to remove it.  As I palpated her abdomen it seemed to be about 10 by 12 inches in size and didn’t want to move around when i pushed on it.  So i imagined it was fixed to surrounding structures.  After she has her spinal anesthetic placed by the anesthetist she is laid down and her abdomen is prepped.  Next I get scrubbed and put on the cloth gown and my sterile gloves.  I put the cloth drapes on the patient and we begin.  After we pray for our patient I make a vertical abdominal incision.  I go through the skin, then a tiny layer of fat, then fascia, then into the peritoneum (inner layer of abdomen).   Next i see intestines and after sweeping them to the side with my fingers, I feel the mass. It appears cystic and it is stuck all along the right side.  i can feel around the back side and it seems there is space behind near the rectum.  Slowly I make an incision along the right side and slowly make it down to where the iliac artery and vein are.  I find there seems to be two main cysts.  Im able to slowly go inferior to the cyst and the later and find the two main cysts off in my hands.  Below that is the uterus that looks fine and the left ovary is normal.  So I close up the fascia, and skin and she goes out to the recovery room.

Next is the guy with the bike pedal to the rear end.  He gets a spinal anesthetic after enough IV fluids were given.  Then he’s put up in stirupps flexing at the hip so we have a good view of the anus.  It really does look like an M80 went off inside.  I swipe poop out of the way and spray down the hole with Dakins (dilute bleach) solution. As I look around the anus, I realize there’s a hole anterior to the anus and then realize that the hole is between the prostate and the rectum. The prostate normally is directly next to the rectum. How did he get a hole between two small structures the don’t come apart easily.  As I evaluate the rectum it appears intact.  I think a diverting ostomy would be best, but after discussion with the doc that’s always here, decide to not do that yet.  An ostomy is hard to have here as there are minimal ostomy supplies available so no real seal on the abdomen.  I have patients at home that will give me supplies, but it always seems there are more important things to take in my ?6 pieces of luggage.  I decide to leave a large drain deep in the hole and suture it out to the skin.  Then I excise the dead tissue and suture skin back to the anus- or whats left of it.  I sincerely doubt he will have any continence, but then again, there did seem to be a little anal tone left.  I had warned the patient before the surgery that I thought he may be incontinent after this accident, forever.  

i go out to the preop/postop room and start seeing the different surgical and medical consults that are there.  A young kid with a vascular mass on his inner thigh, a kid with enlarged cervical nodes, an old woman with abdominal pain going on 3 years, a 30yo man with an abdominal mass that fluctuates in size and i think i see a mass on ultrasound, an old guy with eye itchiness and a cornea that is completely whited out…. After about 10-15 pateints i head towards home and make it about 20 feet.

The nurse from maternity sees me walk by and says “doc I was just going to look for you” Well it was said in French…. So there is a woman who has just arrive with her 4th pregnancy at about 8 months and shes having vaginal bleeding.  The babies heart rate is normal, but blood and clots continue to come out.  She’s not in labor and is at one centimeter cervix dilation.  They just are drawing a hemoglobin level and getting an IV going.  I do a bedside ultrasound with my Butterfly (small ultrasound that i attach to my iphone).  I find the placenta appears intact and not covering the cervix and babies heart rate is good.  I decide to go get some advise from my wife and another nurse here.  I find them painting a house in preparation for a doctor that is moving here soon.  After their advise I go get some supper of rice and beans and then go back to see what the hemoglobin and results are.  She continues to have bleeding.  So i decide to do a C-section.  I try to call the two guys back to the OR.  I cant get either one.  So the nurse goes to use the  “hospital phone”.  It has no cell credit so they cant make calls either…. I ask the maternity nurse to do something or send someone.  Normally I’d be quite mad by now, but I made an internal pact to push gently when encountering problems here this time and let people make poor choices if they make them.  So i sit for about 45 minutes before the scrub tech shows up.  Then he tells me he also does anesthesia now if I can find someone else to assist me.  So I go find Audrey and ask her to assist.  She is willing and eventually we start. I make a low pfannenstiel incision (bikini) and go down to the muscles.  I divide them along the middle and open to the uterus.  I make a low across incision on the uterus and get immediately quite a bit of blood.  OHhh, placenta abruption (the placenta separating from the uterus and it bleeds in between).  I find the bulging sac of amniotic fluid and open it.  Gush, I feel the blood and amniotic fluid run over the front of me and I feel the wetness through my gown from my belly button to about mid thigh.  I don’t like that feeling!  That’s the side effects of cloth gowns- not impervious at all!  I pull out the babies head and suck out the nose and mouth.  Then pull the rest of the kid out.  She starts to cry as we cut the umbilical cord.  Yay!! A live baby!  So many come so late that we doctors usually see the worse cases and baby deaths.  The normal deliveries are done by the oncall nurse.  I pass off the baby to the nurse near by.  Audrey and I then close the uterus and then the abdomen.  Mom and baby are doing well.  I head home to slow down and shower and get to bed late.  It was a long but good day

.

Shanksteps Bere 2024 #2

We

We are back in Bere, Chad. It is the HOT season. Our room is about 95 to 97deg F in the
evening. Im able to fall asleep for about 2 hours then Im awake again, hot and jetlagged. I lay
there till morning. I get up and all I want is cold water. It’s a choice. We have a refridgerator in
the place we’re staying, but the more water or things we put in it the hotter the room it’s in
gets, as expected. So its a tradeoff. Denae and Steven are doing a very difficult surgery in the
morning before she leaves. It’s a enterocutaneous fistulae (connection of the intestine to the
abdominal wall that makes stool to leak out a hole onto the belly). As they work on that I go
and make rounds. Emma, the surgical ward nurse, is knowledgeable about their different
reasons for surgery and rounds go fairly quickly. I look at all the wounds that are granulating
and change the dressings. One dressing stands out: This guy of about thirty has seizures and
during a seizure fell in the fire and burned his foot and head. I have yet to ask him what
contortion allowed this to occur! But he came in a couple weeks ago with three toes burned
and his head charred. After taking off his dressings i see that the three toes are super floppy,
almost like they don’t have any bones in them?? One has a bone because it is sticking out the
end of his toe. As I take off his scalp dressing I see that he has good granulation around the
outside and a patch of about 2x4inches of exposed skull. I know that skin grafting doesn’t
work on a bone, so this will need special attention. I see the patients with vessicovaginal
fistulaes that Dr. Denae has operated on and they are in various stages of their 4 weeks with a
urine catheter. Some have been “discharged” to the outside to save bed space for other
patients, and they come in to be seen while rounds are made. others have had hystorectomy,
hernia repair, hydrocele- that ended up being a hernia stuck to a testicle and they had to take
the testicle (orchiectomy). I see a boy with a humerus fracture that he got climbing in a tree
and falling out of it. Thats how most of the children break bones, climbing in a mango tree to
get mangos and falling to the ground.
I head back to “my” house, which by the way is the place I’ve stayed in before. I think it’s the
place James and Sarah Appel first built when they started building stuff in Bere. I unpack
some things and then go and check how things are going in the OR. i do some other surgery –
which i don’t remember now. Then we get done earlier since its a Friday and we like to be out
for Sabbath if possible. We really value Sabbath rest as Jesus observed it. Im able to visit with
old friends (missionaries) and it’s a nice evening.
Im called in to see 4 accident patients. The nurse says one has an open knee and the others
with broken arms, but not open. They were on motorcycles that hit one another. I remember
that most patients once they’ve been diagnosed with a fracture, want to be treated by the
traditional bone healer. So i tell him, whoever wants me to treat them, have them stay. if they
want the bone healer they can go. So when i get in there to see them, only the guy with the
open knee fracture is left. So I look and all is see is pieces of his patella (knee cap) sticking out
at odd angles. As i touch it pieces come off in my hand. Dirt and sand is everywhere. I ask for
an X-ray, but the nurse tells me the person lives to far away and phones are not working. So i
tell them to send someone to get him and someone to get the OR crew of Philipe and David.
Only David comes in. But the guy who does the sterilization of instruments says he can help.
So I go to the OR after waiting about .1.5 hours to get ahold of the right people without
success. In the OR i help the assistant gown up as I don’t think he really knows about sterility.
Not that this knee is sterile- it has dirt and sand in it. I find there is no identifiable knee cap. i
see a piece of the end of the femur chipped off and no other identifiable structures. I open it
up more and more and still cant identify any remaining structures. So i wash it out and close
the skin and plan on an Xray tomorrow. To see if that gives me any more clarity as to what can
be done. I head home.
i shower and get into bed dripping wet. I sleep for maybe an hour then lay awake most of the
night tossing and turning. it’s still hot!!(In the next day or so, i am informed in the operating room that this guy wants to go home. And
he signs out against medical advise)

#1 Bere 2024

Shanksteps Bere 2024

We are back in Bere, Chad. It is the HOT season. Our room is about 95 to 97deg F in the

evening. Im able to fall asleep for about 2 hours then Im awake again, hot and jetlagged. I lay

there till morning. I get up and all I want is cold water. It’s a choice. We have a refridgerator in

the place we’re staying, but the more water or things we put in it the hotter the room it’s in

gets, as expected. So its a tradeoff. Denae and Steven are doing a very difficult surgery in the

morning before she leaves. It’s a enterocutaneous fistulae (connection of the intestine to the

abdominal wall that makes stool to leak out a hole onto the belly). As they work on that I go

and make rounds. Emma, the surgical ward nurse, is knowledgeable about their different

reasons for surgery and rounds go fairly quickly. I look at all the wounds that are granulating

and change the dressings. One dressing stands out: This guy of about thirty has seizures and

during a seizure fell in the fire and burned his foot and head. I have yet to ask him what

contortion allowed this to occur! But he came in a couple weeks ago with three toes burned

and his head charred. After taking off his dressings i see that the three toes are super floppy,

almost like they don’t have any bones in them?? One has a bone because it is sticking out the

end of his toe. As I take off his scalp dressing I see that he has good granulation around the

outside and a patch of about 2x4inches of exposed skull. I know that skin grafting doesn’t

work on a bone, so this will need special attention. I see the patients with vessicovaginal

fistulaes that Dr. Denae has operated on and they are in various stages of their 4 weeks with a

urine catheter. Some have been “discharged” to the outside to save bed space for other

patients, and they come in to be seen while rounds are made. others have had hystorectomy,

hernia repair, hydrocele- that ended up being a hernia stuck to a testicle and they had to take

the testicle (orchiectomy). I see a boy with a humerus fracture that he got climbing in a tree

and falling out of it. Thats how most of the children break bones, climbing in a mango tree to

get mangos and falling to the ground.

I head back to “my” house, which by the way is the place I’ve stayed in before. I think it’s the

place James and Sarah Appel first built when they started building stuff in Bere. I unpack

some things and then go and check how things are going in the OR. i do some other surgery –

which i don’t remember now. Then we get done earlier since its a Friday and we like to be out

for Sabbath if possible. We really value Sabbath rest as Jesus observed it. Im able to visit with

old friends (missionaries) and it’s a nice evening.

Im called in to see 4 accident patients. The nurse says one has an open knee and the others

with broken arms, but not open. They were on motorcycles that hit one another. I remember

that most patients once they’ve been diagnosed with a fracture, want to be treated by the

traditional bone healer. So i tell him, whoever wants me to treat them, have them stay. if they

want the bone healer they can go. So when i get in there to see them, only the guy with the

open knee fracture is left. So I look and all is see is pieces of his patella (knee cap) sticking out

at odd angles. As i touch it pieces come off in my hand. Dirt and sand is everywhere. I ask for

an X-ray, but the nurse tells me the person lives to far away and phones are not working. So i

tell them to send someone to get him and someone to get the OR crew of Philipe and David.

Only David comes in. But the guy who does the sterilization of instruments says he can help.

So I go to the OR after waiting about .1.5 hours to get ahold of the right people without

success. In the OR i help the assistant gown up as I don’t think he really knows about sterility.

Not that this knee is sterile- it has dirt and sand in it. I find there is no identifiable knee cap. i

see a piece of the end of the femur chipped off and no other identifiable structures. I open it

up more and more and still cant identify any remaining structures. So i wash it out and close

the skin and plan on an Xray tomorrow. To see if that gives me any more clarity as to what can

be done. I head home.

i shower and get into bed dripping wet. I sleep for maybe an hour then lay awake most of the

night tossing and turning. it’s still hot!!(In the next day or so, i am informed in the operating room that this guy wants to go home. And

he signs out against medical advise)

Shanksteps Bere April #12 with pictures

Shanksteps Bere April #12 with pictures
I go in for the last day at Bere Hospital before I leave.  Went to morning worship then back to my room to prepare stuff while they have another meeting.  When I go back in I do rounds with Abouna, a nurse who does quite a number of surgeries as he’s been trained.  He’s quite intelligent.  I do rounds with him so that he knows what I plan for each of my patients and can tell the next surgeon when he comes next week.
The first patient is ready, he’s an old tall Arab guy with a large prostate on ultrasound and can’t pee.  I start to cut his abdomen and though the nurse said he was ready he feels it!  So I wait till he gets some ketamine before I continue. I make a phanynsteal incision, cutting down through the skin and fascia, split muscles along the midline and then spread above the bladder sweeping the peritoneum and intestines up and away from the bladder.  I open the bladder and suck out all the liquid we’ve put in the bladder to distend it.  I feel inside and feel a huge prostate.  Hmmm, is this cancerous?  I don’t feel nodules, but it is large.  Slowly I break the anterior prostate and gradually shell it out with different fingers.  As each one gets tired, I use a different finger.  Usually my right index and middle fingers. I have to make my incision in the bladder a little larger as it won’t come out of my original size incision.  After removing it, I sew up the back wall down low where most of the bleeding occurs.  Blood is constantly welling up and it’s hard to see.  Eventually with the stitching it slows down.  I put a new foley in and inflate the balloon.  I check to find that both ureters are still putting out urine and I hadn’t caught either one in my stitching.  They are working well, so I close the bladder in two layers like usual.  I leave a piece of sterile glove as a drain and close up the rest of the layers, irrigating at each layer.  We take him out to the “recovery room” and bring the family in to show them how to take care of the bladder irrigation.  It’s sad that I feel more confidence in the family doing well with the irrigation than the nurses.  But the families here are used to caring for their patient and they’re invested.  Once they understand what I want them to do they usually do it.  It just takes repeated translations to tell them.  And I do it differently than Dr. Denae, leaving the foley on tension, so it’s a learning curve for the nurses too.  Once I think the family understands, I see some consults about a leg mass, neck mass, infertility, a hernia, Then go into the next surgery that’s ready.
The next was an old lady with a black dead foot.  Yesterday when I saw it, it was dry gangrene, dead and shriveled black without an odor.  Today the whole pre-op area smells like dead with pus! Wet gangrene.  She is taken back and a spinal anesthetic done.  Her below knee amputation goes well.  There isn’t as much blood flow as normal so I wonder if she will heal this amputation site.  I do it with a nursing student as Abouna had to go to the government office because he’s involved in some sort of land dispute.  They call him and say come now, so he leaves work and goes and deals with it.  A few hours later he’s back at work.  The student helping me is helpful, but I have to direct him quite a bit on what to do.
I see some more consults, and then there is a older woman with a hernia in her central abdomen about the size of a foot ball.  Initially when I saw her I wasn’t sure wether this represented a hernia or a mass, but I suspected hernia.  After her spinal we are able to reduce it, hernia!  I cut down into the large fat layer and gradually around the hernia sac.  I open and resect the large sac.  I then close the fascia with a large suture.  I suspect she may have a large seroma (fluid collection) in the fatty layer, so I leave a piece of sterile glove as a drain.
One of the consults I see next is an old guy who can’t pee.  He says he had a foley catheter in that didn’t work but when they pulled it he had a lot of blood in his penis.  Once again I be the foley was placed and the balloon blown up below the prostate and not in the bladder.  Then  suprapubic foley was placed.  He hasn’t been able to urinate with his penis since.  The foley in the lower abdomen fell out a week ago.  He went to the hospital in Kouseri (Cameroon) and they wanted 200,000- 300,000 CFA ($400-500) for the surgery to fix him.  He decided to come to us about 12 hours away.  But it took him about a week to find money and get here.  He says that he can’t pee and small amounts of urine come out his abdomen.  I do an ultrasound with my Butterfly and see a very full bladder up to his naval.  He pays at the pharmacy for a foley and bag and I take him into the operating room as I know this will be difficult as the tract has closed up.  I anesthetize his skin and cut back open the skin.  I know Im going to do this blind along a tract that has closed, but I hope I can re-open it and get a foley in the same place.  So I probe the tract with a sterile heavy blunt probe that usually used for vaginal stuff.  Im gradually able to shove it down the tract into the bladder.  I feel a pop then pull it back out.  No urine.  I know I was in deep enough it was easy after the pop.  And I know I have a huge target of urine to hit.  So I put the heavy probe down a foley catheter and push it down.  It’s tight but I think I get it in.  The probe is difficult to pull out.  After getting it out- only a small amount of urine in the foley.  I use a force to cram more foley in the hole.  Urine comes welling up in the foley.  I very grateful.  I blow up the balloon, which doesn’t cause any pain, so the balloon is in the right place.  He drains about 2 liters of urine and feels much better.  
I look at the registry of surgeries since Ive been here.  35 surgeries in 2.5 weeks.  That’s a good number.  I’m looking forward to being home with my wife and in cooler weather.
Pic of large prostate and a prostate patient.

Shanksteps Bere April #11

Shanksteps Bere April #11

I started an audio book in the evenings called Cross and the Switchblade- about ministering to NY gang kids.  Im finding it hard to put down to write you all 🙂  I want God to use me like he did David Wilkerson.  Not for kids in NY but however He sees fit.

Today God is using me to help individuals here with their diseases that I can help with surgically.  I make rounds while I wait for the OR crew to get the patients ready.  I start at 8:30 after they’ve had their morning meetings.  At 7AM I went to the Hosptial worship.  It is singing a song in Nangere and then a worship thought that someone has prepared which is translated from French into Nangere.  Or vis versa if the speaker is Nangere.  During rounds I see the guy with the open below knee amputation that I amuptated for wet gangrene of his diabetic foot.  Now he’s granulated and free of infection so it’s time to close it.  I send him to the OR for preparation.  I check on the guy who had pancreatitis and had a lot of pus out his abdomen yesterday.  I see intestine at the wound site- oh no a dehiscence and eviceration.  I tape a dressing on him tightly and send him to the OR so he can be operated on today as well.  He just ate bouii, so he’ll have to wait till later.  The teen with the open neck wound and a feeding gastrostomy tube is doing well so far just very weak from lying around.  The kid with the leg burn that I did the release on is doing well but not walking yet because of pain. I encourage him to walk.  The old guy with head trauma still hasn’t woken up yet, so we continue IV fluids.  The family wants to give him water orally, I strongly discourage this as he will aspirate and then die, which he may anyway!  I see the kid that I opened the femur on for osteomyelitis drainage and do his dressing.  He tolerated it really well but screams at one point.  The people here are so tough!!  His mom cradles his head as I change his dressing.  There are so many painful dressings here, and we can’t take all of them back to the OR for changing as there is to much to do and I don’t want to give sedation I their hospital bed for fear they won’t be watched and could die.  They are used to doing dressings on the ward, and I do it in spite of the pain I’m causing him.  Of course him living with osteo that is draining at different points on his leg is also painful.  So he has dealt with pain a long time. 

 The first surgery is that of the below knee amputation.  He is given a spinal by David and then his leg is prepped and draped.  Then I cut off excess muscle and bring up the flap.  It has shortened some with time so it’s a little tight to bring up to cover the opening.  With a bit of effort and suturing, I bring the edges together leaving a drain going along the base  inside.

Next is a woman with osteomyelitis of her mandible with draining sinuses.  I explore this and nibble away at rotten bone.  Its is somewhat helpful I think but it’s really when there is a sequestrum (dead bone that has separated) that I feel like Ive really done something useful for them.  She also needs her teeth pulled that are the rotten source, I leave this to the nurse who does that.  Though the OR isn’t a bad place to do this!  I pack and put tape on the dressing.

Next is the older guy with dehiscence and pancreatitis.  I had pulled his pancreas drains a few days ago as they weren’t functional any more.  After his spinal, we prep his belly and opening with betadine. Then as I look in is see my suture intact all along with a rim of fascia just ripped off one side.  Did he do a sit-up and just rip it off, or did the pancreatic juice make the fascia weak, or was it the subcutaneous abscess that did it?  Likely a combination of all of this I guess.  Either way I debrede off the edges and take out the previous suture.  I re-close his abdomen with retention sutures and a fascial closure and leave the skin open for packing between them.  I hope this one doesn’t fall apart.  If it does he may need to be dressed open and I guess that will be the next surgeons problem as I leave soon.

Then there is a patient that hasn’t progressed as needed in her labor for a child.  So she is brought to the OR by Dr. Staci for a C-section.  As she does the C-section I see outpatients that have waited all day since morning.  In between seeing the patients with STD’s, infertility, neck mass, goiter, kid who can’t pee (stone), large inguinal hernia…

I go and check on how the C-section is going.  I see the local doc giving a mask to the baby who is blue and not breathing.  He is shoving the mask onto the face of the baby tilting the head forward and trying to mask him.  I ask that the oxygen be brought, and I take control of bagging the baby.  I tilt the head back to open he airway and mask effectively.  Pulse ox that I have put on shows oxygen saturation of 72 (normal above 92).  A nasal cannula is put under the mask and I bag for for a while till the saturation is normal and the kid appears to be breathing on his own without masking.  I explain to the students how to position the head for masking, and hope the doctor is listening.  I leave to go back to the consultations.  I see a older woman with a huge abdominal mass sticking out how her fat abdomen.  It’s likely a huge hernia that won’t reduce.  Another 27 year old woman has uterine prolapse after a delivery of a dead baby.  Another has vague abdominal pain that “starts in my legs, goes up my abdomen to my chest then back to my central abdomen”  I treat him for typhoid and worms. I often find descriptions of symptoms amusing and also difficult to figure out what to do.  But with limited meds, I choose what’s available and likely to help.  

God help the people I’ve seen today to heal and gain their health back.  Help them to know how much You love them!  Give me Your words to speak to them!

Shanksteps Bere April #10 with pictures

Shanksteps Bere April #10 with pictures

As you read in my last Shanksteps Ive fretted a lot about wether I should take this old guys nose off for a squamous cell carcinoma, leaving him looking very deformed with a large hole in the middle of his face.  I thought a lot about it last night as I was trying to go to sleep and also this morning as soon as I woke up.  I do that when I have sick or difficult patients.  When I got in there this morning to the OR, the crew told me he had decided against surgery and had gone home.  So I was at peace then.  I was looking through an Indian textbook of surgery and realize  again, that we are not the only ones who see advanced cases of cancer and other diseases.  It’s probably indicative of being in a third world country where there is very low income, minimal health care, and inability to get to where there is healthcare.

I examined another woman today between surgeries.  She was one of the many medical consults I saw today.  She could speak in French quite well.  So as I talked to her I got the story that she is about 5 years after her period ended and she noticed about 2 months ago she was having vaginal bleeding.  She also has some hematuria (visible blood in her urine).  I suspect cervical cancer.  So I do a vaginal exam and find that she has a large hard cervix that is attached anteriorly to the bladder.  So it must be invading the bladder causing her to bleed with urination.  I have to tell her that she has cervical cancer and it is already to advanced to take it out.  If she has means, she can go to Cameroon and see if she can find chemotherapy that may help.  I think that is only in the capital.  I have to give information often to people- and I don’t like having to do it.  It makes me sad and uncomfortable and it certainly does for the person who hears it.

First surgery is a prostatectomy on an old guy who can’t pee.  The second is on a young boy ?8, who can’t pee either.  But his problem is a bladder stone.  David wants to intubate with ketamine.  I question wether this will work, but figure he must have learned this with Dr. Olen recently so I question him about the dosing.  He tells me how many mg he wants to give and it sound correct to me.  So he gives some and goes to intubate with me looking over his shoulder.  The kid clamps down hard on the laryngoscope and I worry about him breaking his teeth.  He gives him more ketamine.  Then again, Finally I ask him how much is he planning to give? 7ml.  For his weight Im guessing less than two would be way more than enough.  He tells me how he calculated it and how many cc’s that is.  He calculated correctly but thought there were 50mg/10ml.  In reality its 50mg/ml.  So he has way overdosed.  The kid keeps on breathing and so I decide Ill proceed and Ill ask him for more if the kid really starts moving.  We fill his bladder with water and start the surgery.  After opening the bladder we find a stone about the size of a pencil eraser- large enough to plug the exit of the bladder.  I closed him up and checking on him later he seems to be doing well.

On rounds, I ask the kid with the open neck to try a swig of water.  It pours out his neck in a different place.  So we will just keep with G-tube feeds for a while before trying again.  He is starting to heal, and I’m hopeful that he will survive.

I was called in tonight to see a guy who had had an accident on a motorcycle yesterday in a town about 2 hours away.  They left the other hospital to come here.  He has been unconscious since the accident.  He has a cut on his head that they repaired.  As I examine him I find he had normal pupils, hardly reacts to painful stimulus and has a broken clavicle and loose ligaments in his left knee which is also swollen.  I don’t find any other abnormalities.  His glucose is normal, and his blood count a little low but reasonable.  He has a urine catheter in place, but it’s in the wrong place because the bladder is full without it coming out.  So the nurse will replace the urine catheter and start IV fluids and we will watch and see if he recovers from his traumatic brain injury.  Im called back in because the foley catheter can’t be re-inserted.  And he’s bleeding after the last one was removed.  Yep, the balloon must have been blown up below the prostate.  I hate it when people do that- it makes for a lifetime of urethral strictures- if he survives his brain injury.  I go in and there is blood all over  coming from his penis.  Sure enough, I can’t get a foley in because the urethra was burst with a blood inflation.  I try a number of times.  Finally I give up and put in a suprapubic IV catheter.  This will get him through the night so I can deal with it tomorrow.

PICS- Below are the burn kid post-op leg contracture release, and the old man with squamous cell eaten the inside of his nose.

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Shanksteps Bere April #9

Shanksteps Bere April #9

It rains near by in the early evening and the air cools from 95 to about 86.  I sleep well.  I am called at 5:30 to see a woman who is 26 years old with RLQ pain since last night.  She says the pain is constant and strong.  She points to her Right flank.  She’s vomited a couple times.  Her tests show she has malaria and doesn’t have typhoid.  Though I know the type of typhoid test we have here is very inaccurate.  She also is not pregnant.  She denies any vagnial discharge and hasn’t had any problems with BMs or urination.  I ultrasound her and see a normal appearing kidney on that side.  I can’t see an appendix.  But based on her symptoms I think this likely represents appendicitis.  So I ask them to keep her NPO (nothing per Os.  Nothing by mouth).  Get an extra IV going and we will plan on operating on her this morning.

Later on Im told she is feeling better and doesn’t want surgery.  I think good, maybe I was wrong.  Then I see a text from Dr. Staci, appy lady, have I seen her.  She sends her over to the OR where I’ve been all day.  As I examine her she says she feels somewhat better and doesn’t want an operation.  I take this as a good sign, and decide Ill examine her again in the morning.

My first surgery this morning was an old guy with prostatic hypertrophy for a prostatectomy.  I wish I new how to do a TURP and had the equipment.  That would be best, but I do what I know how to do and it does help them.  I do tow old guys today in the same manner as Ill describe now.  They get a spinal anesthetic.  Then fluid is put into and distends their bladder displacing the intestines up and so when I cut down in the lower abdomen, I get to bladder rather than intestines.  His abdomen is prepped then I cut through the various layers to the bladder.  I sweep the peritoneum (covering of intestines) up and out of the way.  Then I open the bladder, sucking all the fluid that we had just put in there.  I stick my finger in the bladder and feel a large prostate.  Slowly I shell it out.  There are two large pieces.  My fingers and ligaments ache a bit as they really get taxed when I do this.  I close the bladder in two layers and then leave a sterile piece of glove as a drain, and close the rest of the layers.

The next is a woman who has cervical cancer and vaginal bleeding and keeps on dropping her hematocrit as we give her blood.  So I decide waiting isn’t helping her so I decide to proceed.  We give her two bags of blood then start the surgery.   As the foley is inserted it drains blood.  I re-look at her carnet (medical booklet) and it definitely says vaginal bleeding with mobile cervical cancer.  So I open her abdomen and find a small uterus.  And something hard in her omentum.  I take the hard part out of the omentum and don’t find any evidence of metastasis on liver or peritoneum.  I clamp, cut, tie down the sides of the uterus and each tie really stresses my fingers again.  These also stress my finger ligaments as it takes a lot of force to tie these tight so the vessels won’t bleed afterwards.  Finally I come across below the uterus, cervix across the vagina.  I look at the cervix on the specimen and it looks normal.  Hmmm, well sure doesn’t look like cervical cancer to me.  Back to ? Bladder cancer.  I can’t feel anything abnormal in the bladder.  But Ive decided even if I see a bladder cancer again I will likely not do any surgeries for it.  It is many hours of surgery and I don’t want to do anymore ileoconduits and don’t think it really prolonged their lives in the past.  So I close.  Even tonight as I type I can feel my index finger is tired.

I do the other prostate guy in the same way as above.

Then the last one of the day is a 20 something woman with huge swelling of her face she says has gone on 3 years.  And worse these past 4 days.  So does she have a cancer that now has become necrotic??  So many unknowns here!  I did an ultrasound yesterday and think there may be an abscess underneath.  With the most being right where the facial nerve lays in front of her ear.  Her eye is puffy and I think it must be pus.

While Im waiting for her to be ready I see many consults.  One sticks out in my mind.  It is a guy who has a cancer on his nose.  Dr. Denae biopsied and sent to Ndjamena and apparently it is a squamous cell carcinoma.  He smells awful!  His septum has been eaten away.  I think that if I do an aggressive resection I may be able to get it all but he will have a horrendous looking face afterwards.  Maybe if he survives, someone could do  a plastic reconstruction afterwards.    So I offer a very disfiguring surgery to them and the want it!  I have a difficult time explaining what he will look like afterwards, but they want to proceed.  I take about 45 minutes to explain.  They go to pay for the surgery.  God help me to get it all out and for it to be worthwhile for him to be disfigured like this!

The girl is ready and so she is given propofol and ketamine.  I cut into the side of her face in a way that I think won’t hit the facial nerve.  I stuck a needle in and so I know there is pus down there.  I go deeper and deeper and eventually hit pus.  It flows out. It was a significant pocket.  As I flush it out, the nurse thinks the fluid is going into her mouth.  Wow, these neck infections and dental abscesses are awful!  Ive seen so many this time.  I pack the hole and she goes out when she’s awake.  

Another dental abscess is draining on another patient’s mandible and we pull out a piece of dead bone out of her upper neck.  These people desperately need dental care!

I think there are only a handful of dentists in the whole country and likely most are in Ndjamena.

I will do the nasal cancer guy tomorrow.  God help me!! I need your knowledge! I’m so inadequate to deal with so many things here.  HELP ME!

Shanksteps Bere April #8 with pictures

Shanksteps Bere April #8 with pictures

Yesterday was different at the hospital.  There were a few surgeries scheduled and one lady for a hysterectomy had a low hemoglobin and needed transfused first, the other two or three ate that morning, so I suddenly had no surgeries to do.  I did rounds with the nurse and about 6 nursing students.  I looked at everyones incisions, opened all the dressings on those with chronically healing wounds, and it took about 2 hours to round this way on about 28 people.  The ward is full and I even saw a few that are living under the trees, discharged but Dr. Denae still wanted to check on periodically.  I got done early afternoon.

So I went and ate some lunch at Netteburg’s and then decided to go out to Bendele where a missionary friend of ours just flew in with his plane a few days ago.  He has a plane that can carry a number of people and still take off and land in a short runway.  I think i mentioned that i often come here with a perimeter spray to help with mosquitos and other insects that infest or eat a house.  So I wanted to offer to spray the missionaries house down there too.  So I rode a motorcycle down there.  It was hot but nice to be outside.  Im on Doxycycline for my malaria prophylaxis so the sun feels especially hot and I burn easier with it.  So by the end of the day Im a little sun burned.  I spray Deietrichts house.  Then I help in the hanger.  He wants to pull a large motorcycle down to the hanger from the hospital.  It’s not been used for years and he wants to get it going.  So we go back to the hospital on one other large motorcycle with a rope.  The one that’s been sitting has flat tires, and eventually we find a pump that works and then he pulls me motorcycle to motorcycle back to Bendele.  We don’t have a key for it so can’t do much.  We move planes around and get one that’s been sitting started and it needs a lot of work.  So i help with a few things till dark then head back to the hospital.  It’s nice to see long time friends again.

Today I did rounds and I had the patient with an open neck drink water while I watched his neck.  It poured out his neck.  His neck is finally starting to granulate as he is getting some nutrition.  So he has survived the infection, will I be able to convince the family not to get him enough food for him not to starve to death.  It’s hard for people to give adequately when it’s not going in their mouths.  They showed me the bouii (porridge) that they were about to give and it was scalding hot.  I told them it would burn his stomach and only give him cold bouii.  Since it’s Friday we only schedule a few cases as we expect other hospitals to refer patients in to us on the weekends when their doctors don’t want to work.  I guess there are 1-2 distant hospitals that do this at times.  So the first person I operate on is an older woman with a large lipoma (fatty tumor) on her back.  It is lobular and takes a while to get it all out.  She tolerates it well, and I though she would need sedation, but they said do it under local, and she did well.

The next was a a boy about 10 with osteomyelitis (bone infection) of his left femur (upper leg bone).  I looked at his X-ray and it appeared to be the whole bone.  He has had osteo of his fibula on the other leg and Dr. Denae had removed that a number of months ago.  Now he has pus coming out the side of his upper leg near his knee.  So the treatment of this in these rural locations is not months of antibiotics but open drainage.  So in the operating room he is given a spinal.  Then I make a long incision down his later upper leg and slowly go down through the muscles with cautery.  I get into a few pockets of pus.  To open the bone is challenging with the tools we have here.  I have a drill in a sterile pouch and a chisel. So I drill numerous holes in two lines down his femur and then use the chisel to get the bone in-between out.  This opens up the medulla and allows for drainage of the internal pus.  I worry about my chisel action cracking the bone across, creating an open bone fracture than he cannot walk on- likely ever again.  I’m grateful that didn’t happen.  Cleaned out all the medulla and packed a dressing into it.  He will be here for months of dressing changes now.

In the evening we all get together for Sabbath vespers at Netteburg’s house.  Vespers here is one of the highlights of my week.  We worship God with songs and words and say what we are thankful for this week.

  

 

Shanksteps Bere April 2023

Shanksteps Bere April 2023

I go in this morning to see who is on the list for surgeries today.  There is a girl with an abdominal mass, a old woman with an abdominal mass, an old man for a prostatectomy.

The girl is about 8 years old with a abdominal mass that feels quite a bit larger than a soft ball.  She is on the OR table after her spinal anesthetic has been placed.  The mass feels mobile but attached.  I ultrasound it and find a solid tumor.  Is it a mesenteric  mass like Dr. Denae thought, intestinal mass, ovary.  More importantly will I be able to get it out or will it be stuck to everything and be unresectable?  I open her abdomen and am staring at a large mass.   It seems more mobile than I thought.  I open from pubis to above the umbilicus before I have enough length to get around this.  It’s huge for her little abdomen.  i get around it and pull up, it pops up through the incision.  YAY!  It isn’t stuck everywhere.  I soon figure out it is an ovary and the pedicle seems long and it has momentum (fatty layer in abdomen) stuck to it.  I clamp, cut and tie, the portions of the a omentum off and then do the same for the vessels leading to it, which are huge.  I take it out and then inspect the rest of the abdomen.  She has a few larger lymph nodes in the omentum.  These are probably metastasis.  So I take them out too.  I look at her liver, and peritoneum (covering of the abdomen) and don’t find any more evidence of tumor.  Her other ovary looks small and normal.  So we close her up.

The next older woman has more body fat than most here so I know she will be more challenging to operate on. I ultrasound her abdomen and find what I think is a large uterus and a huge fibroid in it.  I ask for them to interpret for me and find out if she wants more children.  She says she’s had 9 and doesn’t want anymore.  Plus she’s past the time of her period anyway.  So I plan on a hysterectomy or mass excision if Im wrong about its source.  As I go to see consults, Olen says.  Oh look at that, her blood pressure is 210/114.  She doesn’t know that she’s hypertensive and so we cancel her surgery and tell her to come back in a few weeks once her blood pressure is better controlled.  The staff look at me like Im crazy.  So I tell them the possible problems with it in the OR and they translate for her.

Next is an old guy who who can’t pee and has a large prostate on ultrasound done here and has a urine catheter in.  We put water into his bladder to distend it and clamp the foley catheter.  Then prep and drape him.  It’s been since I was here last, since i took out a prostate.  I make a low phanynsteal incision and go down to the distended bladder.  I open it and find a large prostate.  slowly I shell it out with my finger.  It’s always kind of difficult and taxing on the ligaments of my finger.  I change fingers a number of times as one starts to hurt.  I get out two large lobes and a smaller one.  The bleeding is constant as it usually is.  So I suture up the posterior area.  i put in a large 3 way foley for continual irrigation and close the bladder.  I start the irrigation as soon as i close the bladder in the first layer.  This irrigation will continue for days until it is clear enough to stop.  It is the only thing that keeps blood from making clots in the bladder and a need for reoperating.  

I walk through the surgical ward because I’m done earlier than expected.  I see the guy with the chest tube and people are propping him up and he’s breathing fast.  I check his chest tube and all appears normal.  there is fluid where there’s suppose to be and everything connected correctly.  There is about 1.7 liters of pus in the container.  His heart is racing.  I don’t see neck venous distention.  He’s sweating because it’s real hot today.  I want a chest Xray to make sure the chest tube is keeping the lung expanded.  I go and tell the chief nurse who is also the person who takes X-rays and does ultrasouds.  They run to get me and say that he’s not doing well.  There is a crowd of people out around him.  He is sitting on the ground and apparently passed out as they tried to walk him to the Xray.  He’s conscious, but real tachycardic.  There are a million things that could be going on.  Of them, what are some that I can diagnose or suspect to treat here?  I ask if he’s eating and they say no, and not taking much water either.  So maybe he’s dehydrated, I ask for IV fluids to be run in quickly.  He’s peed twice today and it was dark tea color.  His blood pressure is low about 90/60 sitting on the ground, and HR 120.  we carry him back to his bed and give him fluids.  I guess he can’t make it to the Xray.  No bedside Xrays here.  I check on him later with Olen.  We ultrasound his chest and Olen sees normal lung on the other side and consolidated lung on the affected side.  No pneumothroax (air around lung) and no hydrothorax (fluid around lung), and pus continues to drain out the tube.  As I feel his pulse again it’s less but now seems irregular.  slow then fast alternating.  Maybe he’s in atrial fibrillation.  We consider our only anticoagulant aspirin.  And decide to see if he is still irregular tomorrow.  This is the first time I wish we had ECG here. (no machine and those little pads- we use those up like crazy at home.  they don’t stick well at home, i can’t imagine they’d work at all here.)  

Shanksteps Bere April #6 with pictures

Shanksteps Bere April #6 with pictures

BEWARE_ The attached picture some may consider gruesome.  That is the reality here!

I’m adjusting a little to the heat but sleeping is still the hard part.  I go in and see my surgical patients while I wait for the first surgery to be ready.  I round on the ward that has about 20 people.  Here is a brief summary: There is the teen girl with bladder extrophy, multiple vessico-vaginal fistulae repairs, guy with a hippo bite to his arm with tendon repair, bladder stone boys, Achilles tendon repair boy after bicycle accident, osteomyelitis on the foot boy which is granulating. repeat repeat bladder repair after stone extraction. above knee amputation infection, and open neck teen.  Im called back to the OR as Olen has intubated my first baby.

The baby is about 1 year old and has a retinoblastoma.  That is cancer of his eye.  His eye looks very abnormal and appears to be growing out of his face.  I can’t remember if Ive taken out a retinoblastoma before in Cameroon or not.  I know Ive seen them before.  Either way I think of the possibility of a lot of bleeding deep in a hole I have difficulty of controlling.  I pray over each patient before operating and do the same for this baby. (I don’t like operating on babies!!  here they die to often of unknown problems)  After prayer I start by prepping the face and I scrub my hands with the bar soap that is available.  No normal surgical soaps available here.  I probe around the eye and realize the lower lid is invaded by the cancer but the upper lid isn’t.  So I save as much of each eyelid as possible to be able to put those into the cavity that’s left so that less granulation will be needed. to close up the space.  I gradually cut and dissect around the eye, initially its fairly easy but as it gets further deep in the hole of the eye socket it becomes more challenging.  Finally I’m back to where I imagine the optic nerve and vessels to be.  I place a right angle clamp and work it around the eyeball down to the base and clamp.  I hope I have whatever bleeder is there as I have to now cut off the eyeball to seee what I’m doing behind it.  I cut and there is no bleeding.  I realize as far back as I can go there is cancer or at least it looks like that to me.  I reclamp as deep as I can and take off a little extra cancer.  I see it also appears to have invaded towards the nose side.  I knew this was palliative not curative- but it’s still sad!  i suture in the eyelids as much as I can and pack the rest of the space.

Next one is a 7 year old boy who was burned down the back of his leg a couple years ago and has a large contracture from his buttocks down to his ankle.  It creates a large web of tissue going down that pulled his heal towards his buttocks.  His knee he cannot straighten beyond 90deg because of it.  So he stands perched on one leg like a flamingo.  I plan on a Z-plasty,  which takes the forces of contraction and changes their direction so as to not make the same contracture again.  I finish my rounds on the surgical ward as Olen intubates him teaching David while he does it.  Since it is hard to find surgeons and anesthetists to come here they are teaching local nurses to do anesthesia and surgery.  If you want to help in this way please contact me and I’ll put you in contact with Dr. Davenport.  I’m called after he’s intubated.  We turn him mostly prone and prep his legs.  I prep the second for a skin graft if I need it.

First I cut the cord on the back of his leg the part that is really contracted up and firm.  Then I gradually mobilize a flap of skin on each side.  I start making my cuts in these flaps and then have a hard time figuring out how to create the Z-plasty with them.  I ask Olen to open a book for me and my incisions are correct but I still can’t figure out how to make it look good.  Eventually i find an acceptable way but  it seems to have areas of tension and areas of laxity.  So I have probably chosen a poor location to do a Z-plasty.  I free up everything that feels tight and still the knee doesn’t go straight, even with a lot of pressure there is still about a 20deg bend.  I guess it must be his knee then.  so I continue closing, which takes me a long time and a bunch of suturing to get this closed. There is a small open area left at the top so I fashion a piece of skin I cut off into a skin graft and suture it in place.  I put his leg in a splint after placing a large dressing.

There is a guy waiting in the consultation area that Olen says needs a chest tube.  While my next patient is being gotten ready I take this guy into the other OR and place a chest tube.  As soon as I get it in he takes a huge breath and coughs.  Pus from his lung space spews out the hole and all over me and shoots out the chest tube hitting boxes and the floor about 10 feet away.  This is disgusting!!!  I suture it in place and he continues to cough but now I’m ready.  I’ve had coughing later as the lung expands but not at the beginning like this.  I put a dressing and hook up the reused reused pleuravac.  I put him to suction and it appears to be working.  I attack the little foot pump suction I brought here last time and show the family how to pump it to create suction.  Later that evening he has put out 1500ml of pus into the pleuravac.

The last guy of the evening is the teen with the open neck that I wrote about a few shanksteps back.  The one who necroses the front of his neck with infection from a tooth abscess and when he eats it comes out his neck.  He his for a feeding gastrostomy tube.  He is given spinal anesthesia and sedated a little unintentionally.  The nurse didn’t realize that one of the IV bottles had Ketamine- even thought it was written on it, and gave it quickly.  So he was out of it too.  Fortunately he didn’t stop breathing and didn’t need to be intubated as that would be disastrous, as he can barely open his mouth.  And a tracheostomy in the open pus field would be awful.  The G-tube part of it went well and he went back to his room.

It was a long day.  A cool shower was awesome!

Shanksteps Bere April #5

Shanksteps Bere April #5

In the late evening Im asked to see a guy with significant abdominal pain.  He says it started in the upper abdomen and then progressed to everywhere.  He’s quite tender in the upper abdomen and seems distended.  he has an inguinal hernia that is easily reducible.  He says he hasn’t passed gas but did have a liquid BM that day.  He’s had nausea but not vomited.  Then nurses had asked for an ultrasound and I think instead he needs a abdominal X-ray.  On the X-ray i don’t see any evidence of obstruction nor free air.  So I decide to treat his typhoid and see him in the morning.

In the morning he is still very tender and I think I should do a Bere “digital CT”.  Meaning digital (finger) cut and touch.  So i ask that he be the first one fo the day.  So they get him ready and I open his abdomen.  I get a bunch of fluid that i think looks like it may have come from the stomach.  So I go there first.  I look all over the stomach, front, open the back area, follow down the duodenum around the C curve of the duodenum. It’s difficult and it takes a while.  I find areas of inflammation and swelling in the tissue but no hole.  I run the small intestine from start to finish and see no problems.  I finally realize that everywhere Iv’e seen the inflammation has been most near the pancreas.  So that’s his diagnosis- pancreatitis!  I feel the gallbladder and don’t feel any stones.  It’s also small and not distended so I think i get a pretty good feel.  So i put drains in and close him up.  We don’t have any pancreas labs, so will have to rely on how he feels and when his intestines open up.  But there is nothing to do but watch and wait and hope that he heals.  Im praying for many of my patients.  God heal him!

The next patient Dr. Denae did I assisted her on.  It was a 30s year old woman with cervical cancer that was very hard and filling up the exit of the uterus.  She was bleeding and her baby was about 30 weeks along.  She had broken her water the day before and contractions had started.  So we needed to do a C-section because this baby had no way to be delivered vaginally.  The patient is having a lot of back pain and can’t sit.  So dong the spinal is very hard and we attempt to do it as she lays on her side.  The nurse tried, I tried, Olen tried- no go.  So we gave a bunch of local at the incision site and started.  We wanted to give the Ketamine at the last second so to have minimal effects on the baby.  We got our a crying normally formed baby.  In the lower uterus there was very soft tumor that was bleeding.  We closed her up and pray that she stops bleeding to have some time with her child before the cancer takes her.

The next one is a guy who had a bladder stone.  It was removed her about 2 weeks ago and then the urine catheter plugged up and overfilled the bladder.  Then the front repair fo the bladder ruptured.  So he was taken back and repaired again then developed a leak about a week ago. Now we took him back to repair that leak.  It was terribly stuck and difficult to create any planes of tissues that could be evaluated for closure.  Gradually we found layers to close.  We flushed the catheter with fluids and it didn’t seem to leak, so hopefully it will stay that way.

The next one was a woman who had an injury to her middle finger and the middle joint was stuck straight.   So when she made a fist it stuck out and was in the way.  So I offered to take it off completely or leave her with a small stub that may help some.  So she said a stub would be ok.  So i numbed up her finger at the base.  Once here finger was asleep, I cut through the tissues down to the bone.  then I nibbled away at the bone with rongours.  Made the end smooth then sewed the skin edges back together.

More happened than that, but that’s what comes to mind.  Pray for staff and patients here that they would really know God and follow His lead in their lives.

Shanksteps Bere April 2023 #4

Shanksteps Bere April 2023 #4

Today is Sabbath, we go to church.  I woke at dawn about 5:30.  Fortunately they didn’t turn off the generator this morning, so I lay there in the fan for a little while.  I get up and drink a liter of water and shortly thereafter Im thirsty again.  I drink lots of water all day.

I go in to see the surgical ward before going to church.  I ask the on call nurse if there are any concerns and there aren’t.  So I go with the nurse and the students to the one patient I want to do the dressing on- the teen with the neck infection where I can see all the muscular neck anatomy I talked about last shanksteps.  He still says that when he swallows that fluid comes out his neck.  I change his dressing and see a fair amount of pus and saliva on it.  Though that is a little difficult to tell exactly.  But i have yesterdays experience to know that’s so.  I change the dressing and then talk with him and the guy with him that we need to place a feeding tube.  They seem to understand, but the ones that can make that decision- the older brothers- aren’t at the bedside.  So I will need to explain it again later to them.

It’s another sunny, hot day here.  At 8AM the temp on the little thermometer I brought reads 94.  I don’t feel sweaty as long as I’m not moving and sitting in front of a fan, but know Im evaporating constantly.  

I go with the Netteburg to the church with the kids under the mango tree.  We drive there in the truck with me and the kids standing in the back, sun beating down on us.  It’s nicer in the breeze than the inside of the truck i imagine.  People walking along the road are enveloped in the dust cloud behind the truck.  Little groups of kids playing under trees near the road wave and yell “nasara”  their word for white person.  Nnaasssaaarrraaaaaaaa…..  It takes about 15 minutes to get there.  We pull up under some large mango trees and kids and adults flock around.  As we get out of the truck they ask if I’ll tell the kids a bible story.  I’d like a little more time than that to think, but agree to do it anyway.  Olen starts with singing with the kids songs that they have sung many times.  the kids join in exuberantly with singing and the motions.  When they are done singing, I tell the biblical story of Jonah and his hearing from God what God wanted him to do and Jonah choosing to do something else and run away.  And how God saved his life and brought him back to doing Gods will.  It took about 15 min with the translation and me speaking in French.  Denae repeated the story with questions along the way and the kids were very excited to respond with the answers.  Each kid who answered got a sticker. They were very excited.

We drove back home and hit a few dust clouds too as we passed some larger trucks taking the same road.  It appears they are doing some sort of road repairs.  It’s a weird time to do dirt road grading and repairs just before the rains start and they get destroyed again.  At home it’s 110 outside and 100 inside.

We gathered early afternoon for a potluck meal.  Food was excellent as I always find it at potlucks.  And as far as I could tell everyone had food.  We were thinking about walking around afterwards but there was a patient that needed to be watched as her labor progressed so we didn’t go out, had good conversations and played with balloons with the Netteburg boys that were left over from the wedding party.

Later on there is a patient who came in pregnant and wasn’t progressing and was found to have a dead fetus.  She was followed and given pitocin and still didn’t progress.  So when a C-section was needed, I offered to do it, so the other doctor could have some rest.  Olen did the anesthesia and Douri assisted me.  The baby’s head was high and not descending.  She had received enough fluids via IV so Olen placed the spinal anesthetic.  We prepped and dropped her abdomen and I did a phanynsteal incision (low transverse above pubic line).  I went in through the skin, fat (very thin), and split the rectus muscles opening into the peritoneum.  The uterus looked normal. I opened it in the lower section transversely. It was difficult to get the baby out.  I found the head was large and deformed.  So the head was likely to big for this woman’s pelvis.  I put clamps on the uterine edges to slow the bleeding.  Delivered the placenta, then started to close the uterus.  After controlling the bleeding spots, I saw a hematoma forming on the left side.  I opened the hematoma and put some sutures there.  The left uterine artery had torn when I pulled out the large head of the baby.  When there was no more bleeding then I closed the rest of the layers of the abdomen and she went to the maternity ward.

After a night surgery it takes me a while to wind down to be able to sleep.  Im able to text with my wife at home and finally when I feel tired I go to bed.   I got in bed around 1AM and lay there till about 3AM my brain going about random things- frustrating!  At 5:30 IM called about the patient with his neck open with infection.  He is bleeding from his neck again.  I race in and find he has about half a liter of blood clots in a basin in front of him.  It is coming from his mouth and doesn’t appear to be from his nose nor his outside neck wound.  Is he bleeding from his jugular vein?  I can’t see anything in his mouth bleeding and don’t think looking in his throat would help me even if I identified the spot on the inside.  I wouldn’t be able to stitch it… It appears to have stopped, so I order a hemoglobin and send the family to be tested for blood type in case we need to give him blood.  His previous hemoglobin was normal at 15.

I try to sleep again but it is impossible.  I am never able to sleep in the daytime.

God give me Your wisdom to know what to do with this boy. Help him to stop bleeding. Heal his terrible neck wound.  Help this boy to know Your love for him, and use me however you want to use me.

Shanksteps Bere April 2023 #3 with picture

Shanksteps Bere April 2023 #3 with picture

Death- We all die.  Most of you reading this have hope of a life after death, one where we will live with God after all the pain of this world is gone and it is made new again like God designed it in the first place.  Since we are on this world we experience death, and in third world countries death is a daily experience.  Adults and children and especially young children.  If you ask a woman here how many children they have- the response is usually I’ve had (example) 6 children and 3 are living.  Since there is so much death it is an expected though mourned part of life.  I can accept it better when I know why someone dies than here where it’s sometimes diagnosed and sometimes i just suspect why someone I was caring for in the hospital dies.

Im called in last night to see a lady that I had performed a procedure on earlier that afternoon.  She had been admitted a few days ago and had malaria and seemed short of breath yesterday.  So Olen did an ultrasound and found what seemed to be a prominent amount of fluid on one side.  He sent her over to the OR to have me drain it.  The lady was tachypnec (breathing at a rate about 30) after being moved around.  No one spoke her language so we made signs as to what we were doing and she also seemed not all there.  i did an ultrasound with my Butterfly and saw fluid on the right.  So I didn’t know wether to draw it off with a small needle or a chest tube.  so I put a needle into her chest and drew off fluid that looked like pus.  So I decided the chest tube is what she needed.  I put lidocaine in her chest wall about the level of the mid breast and made an incision and spread slowly down between the ribs.  as soon as i entered the chest cavity pus came spewing out with each breath.  I put a chest tube in and attached it to the one pleuravac (canister) that has been washed out and reused for many years.  (They aren’t available here.)  after finishing the procedure I hook the pleuravac to suction and more fluid pours out.  I get a total of 1700 of pus, after whatever drained all over the OR bed and the floor.  she is coughing and that gradually calms down.  I call her family, three guys, into the OR so they can see the amount drained off before I dump it as it nearly fills it and I want more space in it for the weekend.  It’s made to be used one time so it is difficult to dump out as it doesn’t have a drain place.  eventually i get it emptied and reattach it.  Her saturation is good and she’s a little low on blood pressure and as we give her IV fluids it improves.  She is taken to the surgical ward.  I check on her shortly there after and verify that the tubing isn’t kinked and that the family knows how to push on the foot pump every so often to create suction for the system.

So Im called in at night to see her because she isn’t doing well. I go in right away to see her and she is dead.  Not just dead but cool and dead.  The nurses have a list of hourly blood pressures which I asked them to do- and amazingly enough they did.  Usually it’s a fight to get daily blood pressures.  Anyway the blood pressures have been good.  They said a bit earlier she drank water and didn’t choke and that from the nurses (don’t know wether they were students or nurses) point of view she was doing well.  When they came to get her blood pressure it was zero so they called me.  No CPR.  I don’t do it either, as i find in this rural place when we are treating suspicion rather than diagnoses it’s futile.  No ekg machine, and Im not sure it would help anyway here.  I tell the men she is dead.  This usually causes an uproar by women of the family who start mourning.  However there are no women of that family around so they are silent and sad.

Another patient that has cheated death so far, but may die in the near future is about 18.  He came in a couple days ago with a severe neck infection after having a tooth abscess that continued down into his neck and necroses the skin on the front of his neck.  The dead tissue was debriefed in the OR and when I came the first day he was in the recovery room he was being suctioned frequently because he was bleeding from somewhere in his mouth.  No spot could be identified but clots kept coming out.  he wasn’t conscious enough to protect his own airway.  I didn’t expect him to survive the night.  A visiting ER doc got up every hour or two and suctioned out his airway in his room with a foot operated little pump.  It worked and when I rounded the next day he was still alive and more conscious.  Yesterday when I rounded I take off the neck dressing and I see all the muscles and thyroid of the anterior neck.  From side to side and up onto the left jaw muscles too.  It’s a gruesome site that reminds me of the “bodies” display I saw at the museum once on the human body.  Or anatomy class in medical school.  I flushed out the pus in his neck and realize that he seems to be choking.  So I sit him up and have him drink some water.  a fair amount comes out his neck wound.  So there is communication with his throat and this open neck wound.  Im not sure what to do about that.  I will tell the family that he needs a feeding tube.  I think he has survived the infection and will die of starvation if I don’t feed him someway.  We also still need to pull the rotten teeth that were the source of the infection.

So death is ever present.  It is always hard to deal with and each patient I get attached to and think they are doing well and that what we did made a difference- if they die it is hard to deal with.  Other patients I expect to die it seems less painful.  Then there are the ones like this last one I expect to die and didn’t (yet).

God, help me to know what to do with each patient I see and guide us to help as many as possible and know when it’s not possible.

Shanksteps Bere April 2023 #2 with pictures

Shanksteps Bere April 2023 #2 with pictures

Today I awoke before dawn when the generator went off at 5AM and the fan quit.  Instant heat.  It was down to 86 by the morning.  So at least not 95 like i anticipated.  But I normally sleep in a room that’s 60 deg.  So it was toasty.

Went in and rounded with Denae to learn the patients on the surgical ward.  Many chronic wounds or infections that are being dressed.  Some in diabetics and others not.  A lady that had mastitis that sloughed all the skin of the breast.  Older guy with osteomyelitis (bone infection) Bladder stone removals that got infected.  Patients she’s repaired vessicovaginal fistulae (connection between bladder and vagina from prolonged labor and necrosis of the tissue between the two.

They worked on the generator today and then about 10 AM said one was fixed enough that we could do surgeries.  The other was hopelessly ruined by the piston going through the side of the block.  i think these two generators have been running 24/7 alternately for 10-15 years so not surprising that a major problem has happened.

I went to the OR and found out my two first surgeries were to remove bladder stones from a 7 year old and a 14 year old, both boys.  The first one the two visiting ER docs did the anesthesia.  I told them Ketamine should be fine, so it was given and I started. The boy was quite fearful, which is unusual here but quite understandable, but after Ketamine he was calm.   I made an incision in the low abdomen across the belly in a gentle curve down low.  Went through the different layers and exposed the bladder we had distended with water and betadine.  The cautery was being used in the other OR by the nurse doing a hernia surgery(he has been being trained by the other surgeons so there can be some coverage when there are no surgeons here;  If you are a surgeon and want to volunteer in Bere it’s very needed the rest of this year).   so without cautery I got more bleeding than I like.  I used to use Ketamine a lot in Cameroon I have opinions about how much and IM / IV to give, and what meds to associate with it.  They did a different way which is fine but at least on that patient seemed less effective.  Every-time I touched him in his lower abdomen he would push back, obliterating my view.  They gave more and more and gave ativan…  He still pushed back at every touch.  Finally they intubated him and with isoflurane he stopped pushing back.  After opening the bladder, I fish around with my finger and pull out two smooth oddly shaped stones, each about a quarter in size.  i feel around and don’t find anything else abnormal.  i close up the various layers and leave a piece of glove as a drain to the space outside the bladder.  This is in case the urine catheter gets plugged and the nurse doesn’t alert me or unclog it that there is a way for fluid to drain out if it ruptures through my bladder repair.

In between cases I go and see a girl who is about 5 months old and has a huge nose mass.  it was small at birth and now is very large.  Is it a tumor from a sinus, brain coming forward, a mass of blood vessels?  So many options I know very little about.  i get an ultrasound and see some solid material in it and also fluid.  She starts to cry as I am running my ultrasound over it and i see that with each force of her crying, the fluid areas expand.  This make me think of it being brain and cerebral spinal fluid coming out. (I will attempt to attach pictures of her at the bottom).  I decide if I try to resect this it will likely kill her.  At first the family is forceful that they want me to do surgery to take it off, then as we discuss it they decide if she will die either way, that they prefer to take her home and let whatever happens happen.  I wish I could do something useful for the child, but I don’t think Id help and would hasten her demise.

The next 14 year old boy with another bladder stone is brought to the OR after cleaning it.  The nurse doing anesthesia tries a number of times for the spinal without success.  I offer to try.  the boy is very stoic and not moving much with each poke in his back, which is hard to sit still for as it’s painful.  I give it a few tries, then get the right space and inject the medication.  He lays back and it works and he feels nothing from mid abdomen down.  His surgery goes much easier as I have cautery now, a good assistant (the previous assistant was a student nurse, not as helpful), and a patient that is still and not reacting to what Im doing.  I get into his bladder and I can feel the stone down low.  Instead of floating around in the bladder like the last kid, this one is stuck down in the outlet of the bladder.  Im amazed he could get any urine past it.  It seems to have grown in place and is extremely hard to dislodge from its pocket.  I try a variety of things.  Finally I have to use some sharply toothed clamp to get a hold of it and slowly yank it from its place.  This one is the size of a small chicken egg a little more than an 1 inch in length and oval with a nodular surface.  I close up his bladder and abdomen and see some consults in the OR entry room.

In the afternoon there is a wedding of a missionary and her fiancé from the same country she’s from.  i don’t make it to the wedding, which is OK with me.  I do make it to the reception and enjoy food and seeing other missionary friends that aren’t at the hospital but live in a town a little ways away.  It gets dark as we are out and Im being bitten by mosquitos.  i hope I don’t get malaria again.  Ive avoided it that last few times Ive been here but many of the missionary kids have malaria right now because of an evening event recently they tell me.  I make sure and take my prophylaxis tonight.  It’s cooled off to 92 and I shower and go dripping to bed.

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Shanksteps Bere April 2023 #1

Shanksteps Bere April 2023 #1

As you know, When Im on a mission trip, I like to share with you my experiences in these Shanksteps.  They are shank steps of faith.  So we have chosen to try and follow wherever God leads us and right now that’s Bere Chad.  We had been scheduled to help out medically in the aftermath of the earthquake in Turkey.  When that was no longer needed and we were cancelled from going, we offered our time to Bere Adventist Hospital so I came here.  Audrey didn’t join me this time so you’ll here things from my perspective only this time.

Getting here is always a bit of an adventure.  It went like this.  Fly from OR to Seattle, Seattle to Istanbul Turkey, Istanbul to Ndjamena arriving around 10PM.  Passing through immigration, and health screening, and then picked up my baggage.  Through customs where they requested to open my boxs, then after a bit of a discussion and showing my donations that I was bringing in and scanning my cases, they let me through.  Changed some money to Central African Franks and picked up by the taxi guy who has picked us up for years.  Slept in a mission guesthouse for a few hours, then the same taxi guy picked me up at 5am to catch the “first bus” south.  About 5:45 the bus is full and we head out.  Its a big air-conditioned bus that’s worn but still cooler than what’s 100deg plus outside.  Each of us has a seat that isn’t shared with anyone else- so that’s my preferred way to get here.

As we leave Ndjamena, I listen to my audio book and watch the scenery go by in the window.  First its the city with all its little shops and motorcycles and people milling about.  Whenever the bus stops people are just outside the window trying to get the passengers to buy whatever they are selling.  Peanuts in 1 liter bottles, shoes perched on their heads and others in their hands, mangos on a platter on their head, bags of sugary sesame seeds baked into little flat cakes, and a number other nuts or grains I don’t recognize.  

As we get out of the city, there are the nomadic camps of people with camels and others with cows.  They are traveling through seeming to follow wherever the sale of the animals occurs and where food for the animals is available.  We pass other little villages of more people, motos, shops.  woven mats can be seen for sale outside some little building.  Most buildings as you get more rural are mud walls and a thatched roof.  There is a business selling mattresses and so mattresses are piled high in a stack outside it.  Women are out in the morning sweeping off the dirt in front of their business, to make it clean and get the days trash away.

We pass a number of communal wells that have a hand operated pump.  Lines of little girls or boys with their buckets are outside these.  we pass on with a boy pumping that is completely naked.  He’s about 7, and is a face on profile, legs spread as he pulls down on the pump lever repeatedly.  water flows out the other side into his bucket.

I get to Kelo and the missionaries have arranged for two motorcycles to get me.  So I get out of the bus and indicate my luggage to the bus guy who takes my things out from under the bus.  a crowd of moto taxi guys want to take me wherever I want to go.  Finally one comes up to me and says he’s Christoph, he makes a call and gives it to me, It’s one of the missionaries.  I realize he’s confirming with me who he says he is.  My plastic boxes are tied with rubber cords to the back of one motorcycle and I get on the back of the other.  Then it’s about a two hour ride to Bere.  It’s the dry hot season here.  It is about 105 degrees and the hamartans are occurring.  These are winds coming off the sahara going south that bring in dust.  So the air smells dusty and the sky looks sunny with what appears like smog but is dust.  There is no water on the roads as it’s dry but there are big “potholes” that we weave around as we go along.  We go through barren fields, little villages, and open areas where there is a lake in the rainy season.

After arriving at the hospital I bump into a number of my friends who are missionaries here.  The missionary kids are first to see me and they say hello then the others.  Im tired and hot.  But I came here to help so I hear there are some operations going on because the generator is running so I offer to help.  I guess one fo the two generators blew up yesterday, so only one is working and it’s leaking oil enough that someone has to stand near by and put in oil frequently so it doesn’t burn up.  We hear that a mechanic is coming today to fix it.  The other one apparently had something go wrong inside and a piston came out the side of the case- sound like that one is a goner.  

I get to my place to stay- which is a hours I’ve stayed in before and now is a missionaries house but they are gone and have agreed to let me stay in their place- THANK YOU!  I go though my stuff and find my scrubs… OR gear.

In the OR there is a diabetic with a very infected leg up to the knee.  He’s been told he needs an amputation, I agree, and take him into the OR.  We have visiting ER docs who do the spinal anesthesia and I take of the leg below the knee with the help of the other ER doc.  Part way through the leg I get a lot of pus out.  I think it needs to be a higher amputation but since he was told he’d loose it to this level I stay there below the knee and leave it open.  There is good blood flow so it may heal.  The saw to go through the bone is missing a pin so the blade keeps on falling off the handle.  I put some suture where the pin used to be and that helps.  the saw is old and not very sharp so I get a workout cutting through the bones.  I clean out the pocket of pus that was between the soleus and gastrocnemeous (between calf muscles).  I wash it with dakins solution (diluted bleach) and wrap the stump after controlling all the bleeding spots.  

Next is a 14 year old that had a bicycle accident that put a cut in the back of his leg just above the heal and he has a hole and a gap in his achilles tendon.  He can still flex his ankle so the tendon isn’t cut all the way but there is definitely a gap.  So after he has his spinal anesthetic, I open vertically next to the tendon.  I find it is all cut except for about 2 mm left on one side.  I clean it out and go higher till I find the other end of the retracted tendon.  (as the muscles contract the tendon disappears up the leg)  I grab it and pull it back down.  I debreed off the dead edges and suture it back together.  Then I fashion a cast to hold his ankle still so that it can heal over the next 8 weeks.  He will need another cast in a couple weeks that likely won’t happen, as he won’t come back to the hospital, I just hope I can impress on him the importance of not walking on it and rupturing the repair.

The last one is a woman with a sever neck infection.  I feel there is pus in her mouth and feel a fluctuant area on her neck.  She also has gas in the tissues of her lower neck and upper chest.  This is a bad sign.  She is to sick to intubate and cannot open her mouth hardly at all,  so we give her local.  Denae (missionary surgeon) and I open it up and get a lot of pus.  We open her chest and don’t find much there.  No tracks along her muscles or fascia.  WE pack the open areas with dakins solution and wonder if she will survive.

I go to Netteburg house and eat supper about 8:30PM.  Im grateful for food.  We talk for a while and I head back to take a “cold” shower which is more of a trickle coming out of the tube from the shower.  If I squat down I can get enough pressure to get wet.  It feels real good!  I go to bed completely wet and am able to fall asleep before I evaporate.  If not then Id do it again.  It’s the only way I can fall asleep in the heat.  its about 95 deg when I go to bed.  I wake up this morning at 5am when the power goes off and the fan stops.  Another hot dusty day.

Shanksteps #11 2022


We are back stateside.  We spent a couple days in Istanbul on our way back, since our flights took us through there.   That was a new and good experience.  Going to the spice market, large mosques, the grand bazaar and encountering many different people and a city of 16million.  Ill include a few pictures.
As I reflect on Bere, There are so many needs both of the people and of the hospital.One thing Bere Hospital needs is some NICU nurse volunteers.  There are some really small babies that are making it, if they get good care.  I heard that the smallest that has survived here is about 0.9Kg.  That’s about 1.8Lbs.  The small ones survive when missionaries take the kids at night and warm them and give their meds at the appropriate times and feed and give IVs to them.  Otherwise they miss doses of antibiotics, don’t get their IV’s or fed via their nasogastric tube frequently enough… and they die.  Of course some would die with neonatal infections too.  But with good care the chances of survival increase significantly.  The doctors have tried to impress upon the nurses the importance of all of this, but it seems very difficult to change the hours meds are given and the intense care the small ones need.  It just doesn’t happen.
What the people of Chad need most is a correct view of God and His love for them.  Of course isn’t that what we all need? A correct view of God.  I’ve read a very good book called the Beautiful Outlaw by John Edredge.   This gives me great understanding of Jesus and his personality.  Excellent.  Another real good one is The Insanity of God by Nik Ripkin.  About his missionary experience and how God sustains those christians in persecution and different circumstances.  Also excellent.
Thanks for traveling with us on this adventure with God, trying to take care of His kids around the world.  We hope you’ve been inspired to follow wherever God leads you.  He does provide!!
While in Bere we were in contact with some workers from our previous hospital in Koza Cameroon.  We have been told that Boko Haram is still in the area and it is NOT safe to visit there.  If any of you are still interested in supporting the ongoing work in Koza, tax deductible donations can be sent to:
Summersville SDA Church70 Friends R Fun DrSummersville, WV 26651
Phone number 3048726958
With a separate note that it is for Koza Adventist HospitalThank you!  We will make sure it gets there when there is enough to send 
If you want to provide assistance either financial or by volunteering to Bere Hospital please contact stacild@gmail.com Also https://ahiglobal.org/donate and you can specify Bere Hospital
I pray you will be open to whatever God has planned for you and that you’d follow His will in your life.  God bless you, Greg and Audrey

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Shanksteps #10

It’s Monday and my last day.  I’m doing a hysterectomy and I hear there is a woman who is out there that has a neck infection.  Oh no, another one?  Most commonly from a dental abscess that’s untreated a long time.  Its near the end of the day, and in between cases I go out to look at her in the pre-op area.  The whole area smells aweful!!!  She is laying on the one bed in the area alone and semi conscious.  I call the family in and tell them to stay at her bedside so she doesn’t fall off the bed.  I look over her and they say she has been sick about 2 weeks and in an altered mental state for three days.

So I ask myself why bring her in now?  Because they have had pressure by family or friends to bring her in.  They have already tried the traditional healer (witch doctor) and not gotten better.  And now that she is ready to die, they bring her in so that she can die at the hospital and they will be able to say they’ve done everything they could.  So that the neighbors and distant family will not criticize them.

Well at this hospital we operate on emergency cases without requiring money first.  That sure is a great thing, because they would never give money for her in her condition- they know she will die.  I KNOW SHE WILL DIE.  But it is God who can do something about her situation that we have no control over.  I pray for her and send the family to the pharmacy to buy medications…  I ask the “nurses” to start an IV and get fluids going.

I do my last surgery that was scheduled that day and come out to check and see if she is ready.  The family didn’t go to the pharmacy, as I anticipated they wouldn’t.  She does have and IV and we take her to the operating room.

I will not attach pictures, but if you’re interested you can email me at my usual email directly and I can send some.  They are graphic and disturbing of the reality of her surgery.

What follows is graphically descriptive- if you do not want to hear it- then skip the next paragraph.

GRAPHIC paragraph- I want Phillippe to give some ketamine, but he is concerned about her airway as she can’t open her mouth because of trismus.  If I push on her neck she will slowly grab my hand a push away, but definitely altered consciousness.  Im going to be debreding her neck so I think a trach is a bad idea.  He doesn’t think a nasal intubation is a good idea.  So to say there are no good options.  He finally gives a whiff of Ketamine and we start.  She groans at each cut but is less conscious and will not remember this.  The resident, Anna, who is with me does a lot of the debreding.  It is a horrible process. We open where there is a open area of her neck with pus and grey tissue.  At each movement more of the dead smell wafts out.  We start cutting off dead tissue and go from her left ear, down her neck to her upper chest.  We can put our finger undreneath all along this area easily.  Underneath this flap of semi-dead skin, there is a grey layer of fat, then under that some black muscle and some live muscle.  The platysmus muscle is partially alive a and partially dead.  We end up taking off all her skin in an area of about a 10 x 10 inches of chest in the center and then back up the other side of her neck to her other ear and a little on the side of her forehead, then around the base of her chin to complete the area.  We then take off all the grey and dead tissue we can get off.  All while she is groaning at times and Im asking Phillippe to give a little more- which he doesn’t want to do.  As he is conservative with it, she does breath fine and keeps her saturation up during the entire thing.  We take off a little more skin in some areas and the area is looking and smelling better.  (Im grateful in cases like this, that my nose doesn’t work as well as some peoples)  So she survives the surgery and as we bring her out to her family with all the dressings covering everything.  I tell them it is their turn.  They brought her here to die, but I have asked God to heal her and help her live.  They need to go to the pharmacy and get the IV and medicines that she needs now!

We leave the next morning.  I hear that she survived. Then a couple days later I hear that a NG tube was put in for feeding and later that day she died.

The other girl with pus coming out her mouth and ear is doing well and has minimal pus on the dressings now.

Shanksteps of faith #9

The 18 year old girl with pus coming out of her mouth and ear- from her jaw; is still alive!  Praise God!  She still has trismus and can’t open her mouth far, but seems like she’s a little better.  I saw her on rounds today.  There is still pus on her dressings but seems better.  

Have I mentioned that I have to operate often on suspicion rather than a diagnosis?  Have I also mentioned that I find it hard to operate on missionaries without all the information I’d have in the USA?


Friday afternoon I hear that D (a missionary here) has abdominal pain and has just returned from a trip for supplies in Moundou.  Should we treat him for travelers diarrhea?  Well I need more information, so I have some time and so I go to talk to him in his house.  He is in pain and moving around a bit.  He hasn’t eaten anything on the trip and only drank bottled water.  But he does have significant abdominal pain.  He says his pain started early that morning, and started all over the abdomen, and is still all over.  I examine his abdomen and find it’s definitely more tender in the right lower quadrant.  It could be: appendicitis, a tumor, a blockage, typhoid, kidney infection…  We start an IV and get him some IV diclofenac.  I also start empiric antibiotics.  Later I go to evaluate him again and his pain is much better, but now in the right lower quadrant.  I then think it’s appendicitis.  We talk about operative and non-operative management.  He wants to accept the risk of recurrent appendicitis and have non-operative management if it will work. He’s quite tender all over but I don’t think he has generalized peritonitis.  I pray for him, for healing and for wisdom as to whats best to do with him. One of the nurses takes care of him all night.

Sabbath morning I go to check on him again.  He is much better and pain remains now only in the right lower quadrant.  I’m content he is improving.  I check on him a number of times that day and he seems relatively the same but maybe more distended.  I wonder if he is really getting better with antibiotics or now not?  His typhoid test is normal (about a 50% accurate test, so NOT accurate), and his white count as read by counting cells is 5.  Various missionaries hang out with him all day, and another nurse continues to give him his meds.

Sunday morning  I go to see him and he seems a little worse with pain in both sides of lower abdomen.  I consider this a failure of non-operative management.  He also just vomited before I arrived, about 500 mls of bile.  He wants to talk to the other missionary docs before doing anything else. I go outside and am able to get a signal and talk to his wife and tell her I think he should be operated on right away.  I go into the hospital to make rounds and inform the others.  After rounds I go back to see what the discussion has been.  He’s been walking around trying to see if that would help. It hasn’t.  One of the other docs did an ultrasound looking for the appendix and found fluid on the right side.  Then all three of us docs go and talk to him together.

We discuss that MAF has the ability to fly him to Ndjamena, there is a Air France flight that night and he could be in France by the following morning.  The other option is for me to operate.  I try to make it real by telling him, with these circumstances, I’d be operated on here.  The other two docs are divided as to whether they’d stay or try to get to France.  He contemplates it for a while and decides to accept the risks here rather than the risks of travel (someone would have gone with him).

We are all suppose to go to one of the Chaddian workers houses to eat lunch, because she invited all the missionaries to come.  We have to cancel this just as we were suppose to be there- what a bummer!  We head to the OR ahead of him to clean it real well and get it ready.

After cleaning I head back to his house and he decides to walk to the OR.  We have a wheelchair at the ready in case he changes his mind.  About half way there he uses it.  He’s a tough one.  

We prep him and I make the incision.  He is getting Ketamine and Valium as some of the missionaries were concerned about Phillipp’s general anesthetic, and I know Ketamine will work if he gives enough- he’s a bit conservative with it.  D is light with it and I keep asking Phillippe to give more.  We have some propofol so eventually he gives that.  The other doctors are at the head of the bed too, monitoring vital signs…

As I open his abdomen I find dark serosanganous fluid. I feel around the cecum and can’t feel an appendix.  Then I fell a little release and a loop of maroon bowel comes up.  I can tell a band of tissue had been across it cutting it off and leaving a line on it. So it’s either a band partially blocking his intestine or could be a bad patch of typhoid.   I feel around and can’t feel anything left that’s unusual.  I realize his appendix is tucked behind the cecum.  So I free it up and do an appendectomy.  At least that won’t be a confusing factor in the future.  I look around and find nothing else abnormal.  Now I’m worried if he will heal his typhoid or perforate in a few days.  I close him up and we take him back to his house where one of the missionaries will be with him constantly for many days.

UPDATE:  At the time of sending his bowels are opening up and he is starting to drink and advance his diet.  I thank God for his healing.

Shanksteps of Faith #8


Audrey here. I don’t usually write much because Greg’s stories and pictures are so much more interesting.  I figured I should at least say a word before we leave on Tuesday so y’all wouldn’t think I did nothing. 🙂  I have been rounding every day on pediatrics and medicine wards.   Peds  can be extremely sad or very rewarding. The majority of the kids come in very sick, but after 2 days of treatment (usually for anemia and malaria) they are feeling better and running around. It is wonderful to see so many kids turn around so quickly and go home.  Of course there are some that come in very late, or very sick; often convulsing and sometimes with a hemaglobin less than 1g/dL. It is amazing how many of these kids do well with a transfusion of blood and a couple doses of quinine.  BUT there are the kiddos that succumb, and don’t make it home.  Those are the sad days.  The adults on the other hand seem to NEVER get better. This week I had a full ward of men and women, all with ascites from various different causes. Some had liver cancer, some cancer of the spleen. Others had nephrotic syndrome, or Congestive Heart Failure.  In others, the cause was a life of drinking way too much alcohol (usually rise or millet wine- bili bili). There are others with hepatitis, or HIV, or Schistosomiasis.  Almost all the adults I saw could have benefited from lasix to pull some of the fluid off. BUT… the hospital doesn’t have any. So… they were all sent to the market to find lasix. Some is probably legit, others may be blackmarket or not lasix at all. When I finished rounds Friday, I had 12 adults on the wards. This morning (Monday) there were only 2. The rest just disappeared. Discharged, or ran away without paying the bill. Two women last week had seizures and went into comas due to low blood sugars. I found one, Greg the other. Both came out of it with a bolus of dextrose and a bit of sugar under the tongue. Neither were there this morning.  I have heard that they both died when they arrived home. Some left to go to the witchdoctor? To try traditional treatment? I will never know.   Today I was called to peds to examine a 13 yr old girl who was “violated”. The story was a bit difficult to figure out. As well as I understand: The 13 yr old is brought by her father to find out if she is still a virgin. The father says this boy had sex with her. The girl says she had sex with the boy.  The boy denies everything. I am supposed to be the “tiebreaker”.  Is she still a virgin? Will she bring shame to the family?   I explain that even if her hymen is no longer intact, it is impossible to determine if it was from sexual relations, or riding a bike, or using a tampon, or, or, or… The father seems to understand but still wants her examined, and the results documented. Their plan was to take the boy to the police if the girl was no longer a virgin.  Can you imagine doing that in the US? One amazing story that I can tell you about my time here is about a little baby named Toungou. She is a twin, born 3 weeks before. I met her.  She was brought in to the hospital after being taken to 2 different health centers for 2 days of convulsions.  When I saw her, 2 of our volunteers here (an RT and a PA) had been trying to ressussitate her. She had stopped breathing twice already and had been bagged and given CPR.  We checked her sugar, which was normal. Hemaglobin was normal. Malaria smear was negative. No nuchal rigidity or bulging fontanelle. I helped bag her for several hours. We would stop, and she would breathe on her own. Then the breathing stopped. The heart slowed and stopped. She was pronounced dead. For 30 sec, 40sec…Then she would convulse and start breathing again. She did this 4 times and we decided that she really wanted to live.  Fortunately, the midwife here, who is also doing amazing things with preemies and very tiny babies, has a portable cpap machine. Little Toungou just needed to keep breathing to trigger the machine. She was given Rocephin, Dextrose, and put on cpap. Mom agreed to have us take care of her in our homes, so she spent every moment with one of us volunteers. Nights at one house to be watched carefully; days elsewhere.  I was fortunate to be able to hang out with her after rounding until she went home with someone else for the night. Within 3 days she started to look better. She was no longer seizing. She was being given mom’s milk by tiny NG tube. She was still receiving Rocephin for probable meningitis.  After 4 days with us night and day, she was given back to mom to take care of during day, and just spending nights with one of us.  After 6 days, she started breastfeeding on her own. The NG tube was removed and she went home yesterday. Glory Be To God!
I am now sending this from the capitol of Chad, N’Djamena. We are on our way to spend 3 days in Istanbul before flying back to Oregon. This has been a difficult trip for me (maybe more to follow), but baby Toungou and many of the other kiddos have made it beautiful as well.   

Shanksteps of faith #7

Horrible details follow, read only when you’re ready to be touched by someones hurt.

She is 18, she has pus coming out of her mouth.  She cant open her mouth because of a muscle spasm called trismus.  She is laying in the pre-op area and the whole place smells like horrible pus.  She appears to be in pain and has the very sick look to her.  Some of you will know what this looks like.  She has had dental abscesses for a week or two.  They brought her here on a two wheeled push cart.  They put the cart “en gaauge” to pay for her medications and treatment.  This means they have money coming but that the cart is the security that money is coming.  As she lays on her side I push around on her neck and she spits out some more thick pus.  She looks swollen like a chipmunk in her cheeks.  I feel they are both very soft around the mandible.  This pus near her mandible must communicate with her mouth.  She is the last surgery of the day and we take her back to the OR beating off the flys that accompany her.  Phillippe doesn’t want to give her any anesthetic as he thinks this will kill her.  I tend to agree that intubation is impossible, a tracheostomy has killed two patients here that I know of in the fact that they eventually mucus plug and the patient dies of asphyxiation.  Ketamine may be risky, I think a little would help.  He doesn’t want it and I don’t push. 

As I look over her face and neck, I push on the left chin and more thick pus flows out of her ear.  WOW!!! This is horrible.  I certainly do not think she will live through this.  I put in the local anesthetic after prepping her with betadine.  I cut in about a cm and don’t get pus like I expected by palpation.  So I use a syringue and needle and aspirate deeper.  I get air first, and this happens twice.  Oh even worse than I had thought.  She has gas, necrotizing bacteria.  God, I pray out loud, help this girl, heal her God, she will die unless you heal her!! If it is most merciful to let her go, then do it, otherwise heal her!!

I cut deeper and chunks of pus flow out.  I put my finger in and feel around the angle of the mandible, and then down her neck.  This is a big pocket.  I incise the lower part to of the pocket.  All of this is causing her pain, and she’s groaning with each push of my finger.  I irrigate out the hole with Dakins solution (a dilute bleach solution).  MORE pus and blood flows out.  I pack both holes and the bleeding subsides some.

The other side I decide to start lower at the angle of the mandible.  I inject lidocaine and incise.  Pus flows out of the hole Ive made and as I stick my finger in to feel the size and extent of the pus cavity, pus flows out her ear again.  So she has pus up the the base of her skull and it’s  coming from her inner ear out.  I flush and flush this one too.  Then I pack it.  Her heart rate stays about 140 and has a blood pressure in the 90’s.  She got Amp, Gent, and Flagyl.  Wish I had some clindamycin.

The nurses take her to the ward where she’ll sleep on the stretcher for the night because there are no beds on the surgical ward available.

GOD HEAL HER!  THAT’S  HER ONLY CHANCE!

Shanksteps 2022 #1

Shanksteps 2022 #1
Here we are again on another trip to volunteer in Africa.  We are going to the same hospital in Chad we’ve been to a number of times.  Currently there is no general surgeon there, and hasn’t been for a few months.  If you know of any general surgeons who want to go and live in Chad, one or two are very needed.  (They could contact me for starters).  
We leave home Tuesday and stay in Eugene to catch the 5AM flight.  Then to Seattle for a long 12 layover.  Then a 9 hour flight to Istanbul.  We are there a couple hours then on to Ndjamena, Chad on a 8 hour flight with a stop in Niger along the way.  Each flight is progressively more “african” in nature.  By the last flight there is no calling of sections to load the plane.  Everyone just forms into a mass of people jockeying for a position at the area where you go past the attendants taking our boarding passes, and we know this so we stand near the front and end up in the first quarter of people loading.  this is advantageous because then there is still luggage space above to put our carry on luggage rather than it taking up floor space near our feet.  
We land in Ndjamena on Friday at 2AM and go through immigration and customs after collecting our baggage- which all made it! then on to find our driver L.  He has picked us up many years of going there and is always punctual and has also arranged for us to be able to change money at this hour of 2AM.  L is definitely more expensive ($40) than he used to be, but still worth it to have someone we know waiting for us.  We ask him what bus we should catch from Ndjamena to Kelo- and he recommends the 5AM bus.  We like this bus because its a large one with a defined seat and has airconditioning that helps some.  so we could go to the mission we were to stay at for an hour or just go to the bus station.  So we decide to head to the bus.  the streets are empty but at the bus station there is plenty of people getting ready to travel and others trying to sell their wares to them.  L gets me a guy to sell me sim card for my phone and credit for it.  The sim doesn’t seem to work and then it does after all.  L gets us our tickets and we load the bus with our luggage stored beneath.  We choose a seat nearer the front as this is usually less bumpy than near the back.  We start out before completely full so we stop at various spots along the way to pick up other people.  At one area we stop at a military checkpoint and all the men have to get out and get patted down and show what’s in our bags.  This goes off relatively well and we all board again.  A bit later there is a little commotion as water starts running down below the seats on the other side and down the isle.  Someone thinks its water, and then another says someone peed in the back.  I don’t smell anything like pee so Im grateful and also grateful it didn’t get on the bag i have at my feet.  We arrive at Bongor the bus stop for changing some passangers.  we wait here for about 15 minutes and mill about the small area.  there are many vendors there selling things like- potatoes, taro, other roots I don’t know, roasted beef, lamb, goat.  My favorite to see is the huge pile of fried grasshoppers.  I don’t have the courage to try them, though Audrey has and didn’t get any.  We all load back on the bus when they start honking and we head on to Kelo.  
A little after noon we arrive in Kelo.  We anticipate someone from the hospital picking us up in a vehicle but they are not there.  We get out our luggage and pay a guy with a cart to move everything off to one side where our thing can sit without worrying too much about them.  We sit down on a bench that is near by to wait.  After about 30 min we get a hold of the guy who was to get us and his car got full of water crossing a large water area on the road that was deeper than expected,  and died and was being towed back to Bere by a tractor.  He then tried to arrange another vehicle.  After about an hour we hear that it would be best to go by motorcycle  taxi the last ?2 hours.  He wants to arrange the motor taxi for guys from Bere as they don’t charge double like the other moto taxi guys may require.  We wait another hour and  a half.  People are coming, but they don’t show up.  
During this trip I realized my Keen sandals soles are falling off.  I only brought them and OR shoes.  So i ask around and find a guy sitting under an umbrella who is fixing shoes.  He says he can fix them for 2000CFA ($4).  So I sit near him on a bench and another guy starts talking to me.  Id guess he’s about 20 and seems drunk.  As I sit there I realize the guy who fixs shoes is next to a woman who is selling vodka, wine, and other spirits in little plastic bags.  So this guy is drunk.  He asks lots of questions and talks about how hard english is to learn, and why I won’t drink with him, or buy him another bag of drink.  The guy fixing my shoes warns me to watch my phone as the kid next to me may steel it (thank you).  He glues the sole on with some contact cement used on a bicycle repair kit after cleaning off all surfaces.  It seems like a weak repair.  So he then sews across the front and back of the sole to secure it better.  This seems to work well.  And later on I am very grateful to have them fixed as you will read.

Then about 4pm Im starting to worry, if we get started too late it will be dark and more difficult to travel., and darkness also increases the price and chance of a fall.  I know the road is muddy and apparently had large amounts of water in some places.  He calls a guy at the bus station and this guy helps us get some motorcycles from another town beyond Bere.  But they seem only partially interested and also charge a lot.  WE want three motorcycles and there are only two of them.  Then finally two from Bere show up and say they are here to take us to Bere and load our gear on their motorcycles.  They strap our four plastic luggage boxes on one motorcycle with the driver sitting on the gas tank, and put Audrey and I on the other.  So both are very loaded.
Then the fun begins.  We travel through Kelo then head off the main road.  Ive not been this way before and know it must be to avoid water on the main road as it gets huge deep mud puddles.  We wind through many small villages with stretches of farm land in between.  Here a left there a right.  Nothing distinguishes it from any other trail to follow.  Most of it just wide enough for the motorcycle, so only foot paths we are following.  We go through patches of puddles and our feet are wet.  The motorcycle is making a strong clicking sound with each rotation of its tire and I wonder if we are going to break down on the way- but our driver Sebastian says its not a problem and will get us there fine.  about an hour into the trip its getting dark and we are going through some deeper water and getting stuck in the mud.  I have to get off in the mud to push.  I have mud up to mid pant leg now.  We nearly fall over a number of times in the mud and in other sections in deep sand.  Then when its fully dark we hit the big sections of water.  We go about 100 feet into the water and we hit a rock or log that stops us abruptly.  i have to get off and push and water is up to my knee.  He continues on with Audrey and I walk for a way till he stops and lets me get back on.  Then there is a section that he says we have to walk through and they will push the motorcycles and meet us on the far side.  We meet up with the missionary Charles who had planned on getting us in his car that died with water in its engine.  He had come to help us in this section.  So we walk with him.  Carry on back pack on our back and walking through the water.  We walk through a section of water that was about 100m and about thigh deep.  Charles says the day before this was passable with a car and that it had risen to this.  We walk on and get to another large area of water.  There are no motor or people.  just a tractor pulling a large trailer loaded with grain, through the water.  Audrey, Charles and I walk for probably a mile through water that varies from ankle deep to Audreys waist.  I am very thankful my shoes were fixed and are working well.  After about 45-60 minutes of walking in water we arrive at dry ground again.  the same motorcycle have gone some other way and meet us walking on the dry road again.  It’s only a few miles left to get to Bere.  We are glad to be there and meet some other missionaries.  We are taken to the house we will stay in for the month and shower and sleeeeep!  We left home Tuesday evening and arrived in Bere Friday night. Thank you God for helping us get here safely and giving us rest.