Patching It Up

I awoke on Sunday morning to the sound of knocking at my door. Quickly glancing at my watch, I squinted a little when it read 5:42 am. I opened the door in my boxers to see Dr. Kohls looking alert and ready to go. “Do you want to assist me in a cesarean?” He asked me. Without thinking I quickly agreed. I put my clothes on, chugged a glass of water, and ran out the door.
I walked briskly down the dirt road to the hospital with Matthias contemplating my ability to stay on my feet for this procedure, as it was the first one since my little episode on Wednesday. We entered the changing room and the both of us put on our scrubs without exchanging any words of encouragement. As I entered the OR, the nurses put the sterilized
Surgical gown on me and I immediately washed my hands and put the two sets of gloves on. The woman had been in labor for almost 15 hours now and it was apparent that this baby wasn’t coming out on its own. After arranging his tools, Dr. Kohls made the first incision and we never looked back after that. My surgical masked drooped slightly about 10 minutes into the procedure, and I beckoned on of the nurses to help me out. Matthias immediately thought I was going down, so stopped everything to make sure I was okay. As I turned back around he smiled and said that I had given him a little scare, but I assured him I was feeling great. The baby came out great and we started to patch the mother up right away. Matthias give me the honor of doing the final stitching, which I did very carefully and enjoyed immensely. My confidence was back, and although it was only 7:00 in the morning, there was no way I was going back to bed.
I am now working with Dr. Louise King, an Internist here at Shyira, and the wife of the director of the hospital. Although this differs greatly from the OBGYN, I really enjoy the problem solving aspect of internal medicine, and I hope to learn a lot about her daily routine in the following week. The weather is getting a little wetter, but the sun still comes out for a good portion of each day. I start my French lessons today and I hope I can get to a level where I can have a simple conversation with the children before I leave. Thanks again for reading and I hope to get those gorilla pics up in the near future.