Day three-ish

It is now Thursday morning (12am) and I'm on my third night shift so far. We've seen two more patients come and go on to the wards. Yesterday's patients were Lilian and Agnus. They, like Dorothy and Peris, were mitral valve replacements. That seems to be the trend right now. 20-30year old females with On-X valves placed...and they have all done so well! Agnus and Lilian were already to the ward when I got back to work tonight at 7pm. I went to see them, and my main girl Peris, in the HDU (high dependency unit) a couple hours ago. They were all awake and smiling. Agnus was concerned mostly with taking a shower. Today we had three cases. Chepkorir, Julia, and Diam Tolosa. Just like the other Chepkorir and Julia had MV replacements and are doing well. Everytime Julia wakes up she asks what time it is. She always thinks that it should be the next day when she wakes up from dozing off so I'm excited for her to wake up again b/c I can tell her IT'S TOMORROW! There are three things the patients say when they wake up. 1) thank you 2) wata (water) 3) how is my heart? Several of them are very curious about it and everytime something beeps, or even when sweet Chepkorir threw up, they ask "is my heart ok?" I thank God I can say "yes! it's better than ever!" Yesterday Peris could start to hear the click of her new valve. She was concerned something was wrong but I reassured her it was ok and it just meant it was working well! 

Our third patient today is Diam aka Obo Tolosa, a refugee (since 1989) from Ethiopia. He's a bit of a special case. He's a 40 yo male who was diagnosed with TB in 2000. Over the last 8 years he began developing a cough, shortness of breath, orthopnea, fatigue, abdominal and facial swelling, and he was recently admitted to a hospital with pleural effusions. They found he had Tb pericarditis with constrictive pericarditis. Dr. Galat and Dr. White did a pericardiectomy where they remove part or most of the pericardium (the sac around the heart). They said it was extremely thick, and calcified, like a rock. Since his surgery he's doing great and says he can already breathe better! I think he's the sweetest man! Every time I go to check on him I say "Huko sawa?" meaning "are you ok?" and he holds my hands, smiles, and responds "Niko sawa!" meaning "I am ok!" It seems like a simple conversation but it means a lot to me. 

Today, while I was sleeping, there was a big storm that came through. I woke up to find out the power and oxygen had gone out at the hospital. It wasn't for very long but the nurses had to manually bag the patients and the perfusionists in the OR had to hand crank the bypass machines. That's always a little scary! Fortunately, everything was okay and no patients were harmed! Just another reminder of how little control we really have.  

The storm clouds from today.

Tomorrow I'll sleep until around 1:00 then wake up to come back to the hospital and work from 3-10pm. I feel like I haven't seen Kari and Nez very much because we've been on opposite shifts so I'm looking forward to seeing them tomorrow! 

Everyday we do a small bible study between shifts and our Kenyan nurses join us. Over the last couple days they've heard us discussing Hurricane Sandy and reading about all the devastation online. Today when we asked Cynthia, one of our Kenyan nurses, if she had any prayer requests she said "the storm at your home. Do you know if everyone is ok?" I thought that was sweet and worth sharing. Know that we are all praying for you as you pray for us! MUCH LOVE!!

The OR!

Peris playing on facebook!