Surgical Camp Day One - Cambay Hospital / Khambhat, Gujarat,India

Sunday, January 20, 2013

What a difference some sleep makes. The noise of that busy street below faded to only an occasional horn beep, while very close by, there must have been a celebration of epic proportion. Music, singing, chanting, fireworks blasting until the wee hours. For me, sleep came effortlessly and was deep, for others the noise of the party interfered with their rest. Nonetheless, we were all up in the darkness around 6:00am to ready for the day. Breakfast was served as 6:30, another traditional local meal. It is all just delicious.

A little after 7:00 our controlled (I use that term loosely) chaos ensured as surgeons, anesthesia personnel, and nurses gathered supplies to stock their ORs to get their first case started on time.

The local staff preps all of our patients, meaning inserting an IV catheter and capping it off. Children are playing in the dirt courtyard waiting their turn and adults sit cross legged on blankets under the tree or in chairs lining the hallway. We are far from the pre-op we know at home. The patients are calm, and seemingly anything but nervous or fearful to 'go under the knife.' There are no hospital gowns or patient hair bonnets, but rather they enter the OR in their street clothes and what clothing needs to be pulled up or down, gets pulled and away we go. Even so, we are prepping with betadine and utilizing sterile technique in all cases as best we can.

Today's cases included young and old. There were hysterectomies, hernias, burn scar revisions, keloids, and ear reconstruction. Additionally, a share of hypospadias, nasal surgery, oral surgery and a hemangioma and more. Each specialty had plenty to do as they worked through the day and improvised when exactly the surgical supply they would have had at their fingertips at home was nowhere to be found or when momentary darkness came during one of the numerous rolling blackouts.

At 3:00 pm another group of locally pre-screened patients arrived for our team to have a look and make a final determination if their procedure could be done safely here. It was very heart breaking to see some that had to be turned away because it would be unsafe to perform the complicated surgery needed at this facility, in addition to needing more types of specialists on hand. It makes one so grateful to live in a country where, as difficult as it may be to work though the system, a patient has a much higher chance of receiving care.

TV reporters from VTV news broadcasters came to film a documentary about what we are doing here. In typical Indian fashion, they were extremely unobtrusive and thankful that we allowed the group to be filmed. I was sure to give them the blog URL as well as the WSF website address!

All in all, it was a successful day with many procedures being performed.

After work we where shuttled out to a large sandy area close to the seas (we could not see the sea) where over 10,000 people were flying kites, the close of a larger festival that occurs on January 14th which draws over 100,000 people from across the area flying kites like crazy. It was quite a site to behold, and needless to say we stuck out as not from these parts. Many people asked if they could take a picture with us, we were rock stars -- almost famous, grin... Our wonderful hosts had a local woman prepare dinner for us and we ate on the rooftop of our guest house. It was another fantastic evening and early to bed.

You are out there reading, aren't you?

Photos coming shortly.