First off, our crates arrived! Some of you may remember last year we packed up two wooden crates filled with hundreds of pounds of donations we had been collecting. They arrived at the Nairobi airport in July of last year and have been trapped there. We have been dealing with all sorts of issues with getting them released to the hospital, but the most important thing is that it was worth the wait. We now have the first laproscopic and endoscopic machine in all of Kwale County!! The director of the hospital came to see it and was as excited as dad was. The crates also contained a bunch of scrubs for staff, surgical instruments, medications, and gloves. The staff were so happy to receive these supplies!
Our first day was a joyful reunion with Dr Zach (the surgeon we work with) and Mama Janet (the head OR nurse). They both greeted us with huge smiles and long hugs just like we are a part of their family. We brought each of them an engraved stethoscope and white coats which made the greeting even more magical because of their joy at receiving gifts.
Two surgeons we have never met have come from the local county hospital to help and learn from Dr Brown. They were so interested in watching dad’s technique and very excited to see we brought medical books. At one point we found them sitting on the floor in the supply room flipping through a book.
We sadly had a few cancerous tumors that we had to turn away because they were unsafe for us to remove. But we did help a few women this week by removing cancerous breast masses, and one more will come next week for a mastectomy after her biopsy (that we did) has resulted.
We visited the primary school that the trust helps to fund. There are approximately 500 kids ages 4-17 that go there. They are in school 8-4 each day. The hospital has a teacher there who works as a health director so they have doctors and dentists visit to provide education. They have a small demonstration garden that teaches kids what and how to garden and they practice selling the produce at the market. The garden will hopefully grow enough soon to also provide lunches. We brought hundreds of toothbrushes for all the kids and did some education around dental hygiene. We would love to bring school supplies as donations on our next trip. The teachers also asked that maybe we bring soccer balls and we can all play in a soccer match together with the kids on our next visit!
We had some really heavy surgery days, working about 12 hours each day. We did 10 cases each day, but most had multiple procedures within the case. Dr Brown had one tricky hernia this time around where he found the man’s appendix inside his scrotal sac, that’s not where it’s supposed to be! We ended up completing 100 surgeries in the 9 days that we were there. We are looking forward to our next time back at Kinondo.