The New Theatre and Why We Need It

As many of you know, construction is currently going on to build a new theatre (operating room) building at Kapsowar. This is much needed as we currently only have one theatre (see previous blog about this). Just to re-emphasize our need for more than one theatre, I recently again did a C-section in theatre at the same time as a general surgery case (actually more a plastics case) was going on. This one had a bit of a twist though. At the end of my trying week, a young girl came to the hospital in labor with her first child. She was very young (probably around 14) and along with that somewhat immature and not able to handle labor well. We got to the point of pushing, but she was a very uncooperative pusher, to say the least. I tried a vacuum, but when that failed, it was clear she needed a C-section. So, we headed up to theatre (meanwhile, she’s thrashing on the bed and trying to pull out her IV). When we get there, Drew was doing a repair of some crushed tendons under local, but his patient was on the main operating bed. No problem, we’ve done this before. Only problem – the patient is too uncooperative to do a spinal, so we need to put her under general anesthesia and Drew’s patient is on the bed we need for that. So, we have Drew’s patient get up (while holding his arm above his bed) and Drew stays sterile. We have my patient move from the gurney to the operating table and then have Drew’s patient get on the gurney to finish his surgery. I can’t imagine what that poor patient must have been thinking as my patient continued to be completely irrational. Drew got his headlight so he could have decent light for his surgery, and we proceeded with our C-section. It was comical, now that I look back on it, but once again emphasized our need for more than one theatre.

Below are some pictures of the progress on the new building. It is quite an undertaking, as you can imagine. One of the biggest hurdles is that no materials are available locally, so everything has to be trucked in from at least 2 hours away. One blessing, though, is that it is providing much-needed jobs for people. They work very hard, as you can see in the pictures, for 200 shillings/day – that’s about $2.60. Every morning they have devotions together before starting work, which is providing much needed spiritual nourishment for them as well. I look forward to continuing to share pictures of the progress with you. Please keep the project as well as Dave Peterson, the contractor, in your prayers.

Smoothing out the newly poured concrete

This is hard work, as you can see, and all done by hand

Dave supervising the work in his mud boots - an essential here