Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Last day of Operation Smile. Almost all of our patients left early today, along with the Bangladesh translators and most of the Operation Smile doctors and nurses. We still have 2 patients left who needed to be monitored overnight since they got their surgeries today.

I am the proud mother of a little boy. Actually, today I took care of a 6 week old infant boy who is diagnosed with Hirshsprung’s disease. The mother is a 25 yr old who had 7 children. She comes from a remote area outside Chittagong, Bangladesh. Two of her children died from having as she stated through a translator, the same problem as this one. The baby was having problems eating, and was very malnourished. Luckily one of the doctors that went on shore found mother and child and brought them on board the ship.

At about 9am, the OR called for my little baby Wazal. He had such little feet and little itty, bitty hands. He weighed only 3.2 kg (which is about 7lb) and probably one of my cutest patients thus far. His little belly was firm and distended, one of the classical signs of Hirshsprung’s. The plan was to do a transanal bowel resection – a procedure in which they pull the colon through the anus and take the “bad” area out. (See the really cool pictures below, but warning it may be a little gruesome). When the doctors were done, they cut out about 12 inches of the baby’s colon. I had the opportunity to stay in the OR and observe the procedure which was headed by two female doctors, one from San Diego and the other from Chittagong. The surgery went extremely well.
Me and Baby Wazal
X-ray of baby's "megacolon"
Transanal bowel resection...ewww...
resected colon
Observing in the OR