Vietnam Day Four: Second Day Danang Hospitals
We had an extra guest with us at the hospital today. The medical team here has just started a foundation and brought along professional videographers and photographers. The videographer was busy yesterday morning filming Scott in the operating room but joined us today to film our crafts at the children's hospital. The photographer didn't make it due to feeling ill. Today's craft was painting plain Chinese style fans. I was a little worried about this day and the mess of using paints but the hospital staff are so easy going and don't seem to mind at all what kind of mess we tleave. We had pretty close to the same number of kids today as we did yesterday but ran out of our fans much quicker than we did spinners yesterday. I think many of the parents chose to paint one too since a fan is a necessity inside the hot hospital. I was impressed with the creativity of these kids and parents! After finishing painting, we let them decorate the wooden frames of the fan with sequins (another joy to clean up off the hospital floor) and then we gathered all the kids that were still left at the end and got a group picture of them. Then Layton passed out a gift bag to all the children. We tried to have a game station today rather than letting the kids all help themselves to the games and it seemed to work a little better. Layton was very impressed with himself that he was able to explain to someone how to play 'spot it' without any verbal communication. We are both relieved that we made it through the two craft days! Tomorrow will be easier in the fact that we will just be passing out gifts to the critically ill children but harder due to the fact that it's really hard to see little kids that are really sick.
(Day two of our mission from Scott)
Today was much like my first day at the hospital. The hospital sent a taxi to pick me up 9:00 am. I spent some time looking at x-rays in the lobby of the hotel waiting on my taxi with a radiologist who is here on the mission trip from New Jersey. I'm trying to figure out if I should take a 22-year-old woman to the operating room who has a recurrence of avery aggressive ovarian cancer. We know that this will not be curable, but I'm hopeful that if we operate on her we can prolong her life. I was looking at the CT scan to determine if I could respect the tumor or not.
Once I got to the hospital we once again went to a conference room and the physicians presented five or six new patients to me to get my opinion whether not we should do surgery on them this week or if we should do some other type of treatment. I was very impressed with the recommendations in the treatments that they have been doing on some of these complicated patients. They've been giving the same second and third line chemotherapy regimens that we would get patients back in the United States. Their only limitations on treatments that they offer is not due to the fact that they are not aware of them but that they can't afford them.
We then left to go to the operating room. The first patient we operated on had uterine cancer. The surgery went well. I had to make sure that I knew what they called each of the different surgical instruments. I spent some time before we started the surgery to make sure that the scrub Tech and myself were on the same page with the names of the instruments. I had a first year medical student from the mayo clinic and a second-year physicians assistant student from the University in New Jersey scrub in on the case. A member of the junior faculty from the cancer hospital here in Vietnam also assisted me on the case. I've found the Vietnamese surgeons here to be good surgeons overall, however they are quite hesitant when they operate with me. They are very differential to my suggestions. I feel like a gluten for using so much suture. They do instrument tying to preserve their suture, while we use one suture per stitch in the United States.
I am finding it hard to get scrubs that fit. Largest size they have is extra-large and they're not nearly large enough. They also do not wear socks in the operating room. They wear these surgical shoes that are like crocs. Despite the fact that I'm shy of 6 feet I feel like a giant compared to the Vietnamese doctors and nursing staff.
After the first case they treated me to lunch in the hospital canteen. There was all sorts of interesting looking foods that I had no idea what they were. So I chose some chicken, rice and some cabbage.
The second case was a very sad case. She was a lady from a small village who underwent a partial stomach resection for gastric cancer a year ago. Because she was at a small hospital they did not have any oncologists and therefore she did not get chemotherapy. She has experienced recurrence of her gastric cancer to both of her ovaries which were about the size of grapefruits. We were able to get those out without a problem but found that she had a recurrence of her cancer to her stomach and liver. She is only 41 years old.
Once I got to the hospital we once again went to a conference room and the physicians presented five or six new patients to me to get my opinion whether not we should do surgery on them this week or if we should do some other type of treatment. I was very impressed with the recommendations in the treatments that they have been doing on some of these complicated patients. They've been giving the same second and third line chemotherapy regimens that we would get patients back in the United States. Their only limitations on treatments that they offer is not due to the fact that they are not aware of them but that they can't afford them.
We then left to go to the operating room. The first patient we operated on had uterine cancer. The surgery went well. I had to make sure that I knew what they called each of the different surgical instruments. I spent some time before we started the surgery to make sure that the scrub Tech and myself were on the same page with the names of the instruments. I had a first year medical student from the mayo clinic and a second-year physicians assistant student from the University in New Jersey scrub in on the case. A member of the junior faculty from the cancer hospital here in Vietnam also assisted me on the case. I've found the Vietnamese surgeons here to be good surgeons overall, however they are quite hesitant when they operate with me. They are very differential to my suggestions. I feel like a gluten for using so much suture. They do instrument tying to preserve their suture, while we use one suture per stitch in the United States.
I am finding it hard to get scrubs that fit. Largest size they have is extra-large and they're not nearly large enough. They also do not wear socks in the operating room. They wear these surgical shoes that are like crocs. Despite the fact that I'm shy of 6 feet I feel like a giant compared to the Vietnamese doctors and nursing staff.
After the first case they treated me to lunch in the hospital canteen. There was all sorts of interesting looking foods that I had no idea what they were. So I chose some chicken, rice and some cabbage.
The second case was a very sad case. She was a lady from a small village who underwent a partial stomach resection for gastric cancer a year ago. Because she was at a small hospital they did not have any oncologists and therefore she did not get chemotherapy. She has experienced recurrence of her gastric cancer to both of her ovaries which were about the size of grapefruits. We were able to get those out without a problem but found that she had a recurrence of her cancer to her stomach and liver. She is only 41 years old.
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