Index
to May-A-series on “Mission to Malawi”
May Day Labor
Day Holiday: rounds at hospital seeing young women
with unresectable tumors in inoperable patients
in untreatable conditions, then a farewell performance
for Kevin Bergman at the Deaf School, a market
visit and our first social “evening out” at dinner,
before a special climax event for our team.
A climactic
night for Kevin Bergman to conclude his stay in
Malawi at departure this morning, leaves me “in
theatre” with lots of cases to do, and less folk
to teach, for a faster throughput of the still
arriving interesting advanced patient disease.
A Saturday in
the languid tropical African sun, when it is
hard to start up anything like hospital rounds,
but life, and death, go on, and so must we-- before
our second evening being hosted for dinner, this
time by Matron KathrynSurprise!
Nothing turns out quite according to plan! I
am called to theatre for a postpartum cervical
laceration, and discover while making male ward
rounds, a very sick 17-year old boy with a one
week bowel obstruction, and resect several feet
of dead bowel in theatre, with colostomy and ileosotomy
for salvage: I instruct
the nurse to tell the family of the operation
and his grave conditon and then get a near-comical
every night call to the male ward to re-explain;
Matron Kathryn having been called to Lilongwe
by brother’s death, our dinner was cancelled.
A Sunday of
church services and surprise findings that interrupt
a leisurely day that concludes with a walk around
the compound touring Virginia to show her the
“care-givers” hostel and cooking places, and a
tour of the Parks School under the African cumulus
clouds and Nyasica mahogany trees in sunset.
Start up of
a new work week, with a reduced staff due to funerals
and departures, but thorough ward rounds, among
Africa’s suffering, interrupted by yet another
C-section, and an attempt to get back to a running
schedule--in the beauties of the African slanting
sun of twilight as we gather a Pied Piper Parade
of my urchins in train.
At last, a day
of rapid easy operations, teaching a first-year
malawian medical student, and seeing some new
patients with classic tropical “African pathology”;
pyomyositis, Burkitt’s lymphoma, and late-stage
osteomyelitis. awaiting another chance for a twilight
run in the slanting rays of the African sun over
the bush.
Our farewell
chapel service and sendoff, after Virginia sings
chi-Tembuka with the choir, then I discover two
new laparotomy patients and an unusual congenital
A-V malformation of the left arm, and go to theatre
for three rapid solo operations; we go to town
and the deaf school in preparation for the deaf
school “program in honor of Virginia”
The staff makes
choral rounds early to start the day, which brings
a D & C, then an A-K amputation, then a pediatric
hernia repair and a massive abdominal cyst to
the theatre for my concluding operating day, then
a scramble of “parting shots” and packing up for
an eventual return before our final Embangweni
night before departure tomorrow morning.