Orthopedic Team

Its hard to believe its been 2 weeks since I last posted!  Time really flies here in Africa.  We are just starting our second week of adult orthopedic surgeries. We currently have 2 surgeons here, one from California and one from Cleveland, Ohio.  They are both alot of fun and very easy to work with. Over the last week, they have repaired fractures that didn't heal properly (non-unions), fixed several adult clubfeet (in the states, these would have been taken care of before one year of age), removed tumors from various areas, etc.  We had one guy who came to the initial screen a few weeks ago with a plate sticking out of his thigh.  He had previously been repaired with a plate and screws, but several screws came out and eventually protruded through his skin.  We have also multiple patients who suffered dislocations and fractures years ago, that were never repaired.  All of these cases are looked at individually and the surgeons work hard to make  decisions about the appropriateness of surgery.  We have patients who show up at the dock everyday and pretty much all day, so much of our day is spent evaluating them and seeing if we feel like we can do anything to improved their quality of life by doing surgery.  Often, doing surgery has the potential to make them worse or not help them significantly.  

We are seeing an incredible number of kids and adults with bowing of one or both legs.  We are assuming this is due in part to nutritional deficits, but we are not sure

 exactly.  The growth plate shuts down on the medial or inside part of the leg, so the outer leg grows and the inner part stops growing, causing the bowing.  Here are some pictures of an 8 year old who had this problem along with the post operative pictures of how he looked after surgery. The surgery he had is called a posterior tibial osteotomy. He will be in these casts for several months before being able to begin physical therapy.

We will continue doing adult surgeries this week, and then will have 6  more weeks of pediatric surgery. We unfortunately have had to cancel a month of orthopedic surgery in June since we have scheduled adults surgeons and don't have enough adult patients.  We are hoping and praying for another pediatric surgeon to be willing to come, as we still have alot of kids on a waiting list at this point.   

Liv and I buried Brandon just because he'd never been

buried before!  

This past weekend, a group of 14 of us decided to take a trip to Togo, the country just to the west of us.  It took a little effort to get visas and figure out logistics, but it was totally worth it.  We really had a great time together and made some great memories. Togo isn't extremely different from Cotonou, the city we are currently living in, but I definitely felt like there were more areas that were developed and where there was obviously wealth, where this is seldom seen in this part of Benin.  

We stayed in the YWAM (Youth with a Mission) guest house, which was safe and worked out well for such a big group.  We played on the beach, went to the market, toured the town of Lome', had dinner at a nice Lebanese restaurant, went to a local church on Sunday morning, and just hung out in the city.  There wasn't one thing about the trip that was over-the-top unbelievable or anything... but we all said the same thing.... It was a GREAT time.  Although we are here for a reason and I was happy to get back to the ship, it is nice to get off of it as often as possible and get INTO Africa.  It would be easy to stay on the ship all the time, as it has many of the comforts of home, air conditioning, and lots of people all around , but staying onboard doesn't allow you to fully "BE" here.

My roomies, Sarah from England and Venessa from India

We're hoping to plan a weekend trip once a month to at least get out and visit other parts of the country and the surrounding countries.  Our next adventure will hopefully be to Pendjari game reserve in the north part of the country!  

Next blog I will try to tell you more about what other departments are working on here!  Thanks for reading!

        U-Haul in Benin.....