Day 5 - It's A God Thing

Yesterday, the post of the day focused on the fact that there are so many wonderful characters passing through Hopital Adventiste d'Haiti on the volunteer trail.  Some come only for a day, others come and stay for weeks on end.  Today, there was an unique set of occurrences that exemplifies how valuable this potpourri of transient skills can be to this institution and its patients.

We started our day ready to perform a hemiarthroplasty on a 54y/o (referred to by the residents as elderly) male with a nonunion of a femoral neck fracture.  Pete astutely picked up a collapsed lung on this gentleman's chest xray with an underlying pleural effusion.  We weren't exactly sure how to manage this problem when in through the ER walked a scrub-wearing volunteer who identified himself as a cardiothoracic surgeon from the Midwest who was randomly assigned to HAH for the day.  He subsequently tapped the patient's chest for us and drew off over 2L of serous fluid which significantly improved the patient's respiratory status.  The patient was administered a spinal anesthetic and Pete and Dave performed the partial hip replacement without complication.

Just as the visiting CT surgeon and his OR team were getting ready to leave for the hour drive back to their home base in Port au Prince, a young lad was rushed into the emergency room with a gunshot wound to the abdomen and chest.

The victim was rushed to the operating room and for  hours  underwent an exploratory laparatomy with bowel resection and repair, repair of a large hole in the stomach, and repair of a lacerated diaphragm.  A complicating factor was the fact that the child had just eaten a large meal and considerable effort was expended washing out the beans and rice from the belly.  Late in the night, the boy was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit for recovery in stable but critical condition.

Was having a chest surgeon with complete support staff present in an hour of need coincidence or serendipitous?  My wife would refer to this string of uncanny events as a "God thing"...maybe she's right.