Hernias For Haiti

The following is an reminiscent excerpt from Trauma Queen's blog that notes their volunteer General Surgeon was on pace to perform almost 30 hernia repairs over the span of 3 days.  It reminds me of our experience where so many patients were presenting to HAH with inguinal hernias that our volunteer General Surgeon was overwhelmed so many of them ended up in our orthopaedic clinic.  There we simply tried to reduce them and get the patient redirected to the General Surgeon  on a day when he hopefully wasn't quite as busy.

Suddenly a man emerges from the throng carrying a writhing 2 year old boy who is naked and crying in pain. First thing you see is his gigantic scrotum the size of a large orange, tense as it can be sticking up above his body. OMG, this is an emergency. The father asks me if I can help him, can I fix it, is there anything I can do. They have been waiting to get into the hospital and they won't let them in. I tell him he has to get in, this kid needs to go to surgery right now. He says they will not let him in. So I tell him to go to the Hopital Adventiste, we have a surgeon on duty. Gregory explains and they take of running. I find out later they did not have a car. Our driver showed up soon and we went back to the hospital. Sure enough our boy arrived at the same time. By this time he was vomiting, screaming and his scrotum was bigger. I took him to the ER and there was no doctor to be found. I ran upstairs and woke up Mohammad. He came down and said immediately it was an incarcerated hernia. The surgery team fell into place and the boy was healed!!! They saved him, his bowel was saved and he is resting downstairs. I gave Mohammad a big hug, he is our new best friend.  Mohammad has done 18 hernias in 2 days and has 11 scheduled for today, he is calling this "Hernias for Haiti".