Tenwek!

All the nurses with SOME of our bags. Each team member had 2 checked bags full of supplies/equiptment weighing about 50lbs! Then we each had 1-2 carry-ons for personal belongings. 

Part of the red light distract. I chose not to put any pics of nudity :)

Amsterdam Central train station or something like that..

Great Rift

The great rift! We drove right through it!

Some boys playing soccer. love it.

Some "shops" along the way to tenwek. 

Setting up our ICU

Kari stocking up our "nurse servers" with supplies.

After 18 hours on a plane, a quick day trip through Amsterdam, 2 plane dinners, 2 plane breakfast, a couple benadryls for sleep,  and a 4+ hr bus ride we have arrived safely to Tenwek hospital. We arrived here at 330pm (630am Nashville time) and lunch was ready and waiting. Then we unloaded our stuff and set up the Cardiac ICU. We had to bring all of our own supplies, monitors, echo machines, etc. So, we had a lot of work to do! While the nurses and BioMed(they fix or janky machines) guys set up the ICU the surgeons, perfusionists, and anesthesiologist set up the OR. Our Intensivist (Mary Taylor) worked up some patients for surgery in the clinic. After that we had a meeting to review our patients echocardiograms and presenting symptoms. Today we are doing 2 unexpected surgeries: a CABG and an aortic valve replacement and maybe some other stuff. Most of these surgeries will be valve related due to the large number of people who suffer from Rheumatic Heart Disease b/c they don't have accesss to penicillin.

I'll recap the last couple days for you up until our arrival to the hospital!

I mentioned the visit to Amsterdam...that was interesting. That is one place you do not want to take a wrong turn in. We had about an eight hour layover there so the nursing crew and one of our ICU docs hit the town. I make it sound easy but figuring out how to get out of the airport and purchase tickets proved to be the hard part of our day. Eventually, we jumped on a train and made it to Amsterdam Central within 20 minutes. That's when we accidentally took a right instead of a left. Apparently a right leads you to the red light district. I started to suspect it when I saw a red light in an alley...and then I was pretty certain when we passed an adult store...then I was positive when I saw women lacking clothing and men peeing in the streets. If you remove all the nudity and the many aromas it really was a gorgeous city. We later found out some people in our group visited the Anne Frank house and I was a little jealous. Anyway, we got to ride a double decker train back to the airport. We waited around a bit and played some games in the airport until we boarded around 9pm (3pm nash time).

I know many people, including everyone on our team, were concerned about our safety in Nairobi due to the recent events b/t Kenya and Somalia. We landed in Nairobi on Sunday by 830am (1130 nash time). While we were in Nairobi the military and police were very present and I never once felt threatened. The streets were covered with people and, fortunately, the traffic wasn't too terrible in the city. Nairobi was filled with big buildings next to small shacks and dump yards. People wandered through trash for basic necessities the way we wander through flea markets for antiques. I guess the saying "one man's trash is another mans treasure" is truly applicable here. As we headed out of the city we made a brief stop to take pictures of the great rift...then we drove through it! The African plains were endless and all we could think of were Lion King quotes and when Simba's father tells him that as far is he could see was his land...lots of land! No matter how far from the city we went we still saw people littering the streets. There were several small communities along the way with homes made of sticks, boards, aluminum, etc. I loved getting to see some young boys playing soccer in a dirt field! The ride eventually took us up through more hills to a more populated area and we had arrived at Tenwek Hospital.

Currently it is 1030pm and I'm sitting in the ICU. Kristen and I are covering tonight and we only have 1 patient. The other patient is still in the OR. The cool thing about this place is there's no HIPPAA! So, this guy is a 62 year old CABG (google it b/c I couldn't tell ya! We don't see this in babies!) He traveled about 150miles to get here for this surgery. The guy in the OR is getting an aortic replacement and mitral and tricuspid valvuloplasty...a big word for fixing it w/o replacing it. It sounds like there's been some minor complications but hopefully it's fixed before he rolls up into the ICU. We've got two Tenwek nurses working with us tonight so it has been fun teaching them. There baseline knowledge varies greatly. Some are more comfortable assessing patients and other are scared to even put a stethoscope in their ears. We shall teach them!! Someday they can do it all on their own...or at least that's the long term goal. We lack a lot of equitment here. We have 3 guys designated to trouble shooting and fixing machines, monitors, vents, etc. We are having to mix our own drips, meds, and even shot some liquid valium up a guys butt....and that is why I do babies :) We were scheduled to do surgery on a 19yo on thursday. His aortic valve was so severely damaged we were going to spend a couple days giving him diuretics to hopefully get him to the OR. Mary Taylor said he was severely symptomatic and wouldn't make it to 20yo and his operation would've been very risky. Today, he passed away. He had been admitted to get better treatment leading up to his surgery and he coded. It's hard to think there may have been something we could've done even just a week ago. Please keep his family in your prayers as him and his brothers were orphans and very close. Sorry to end on a sad note!

Sorry if this is scattered. I'm on and off the internet so I'm updating at all different times. I'm going to tend to my dude now; our other guy may be coming in soon. I'll hopefully be able to update each time I work! Thanks for your continued support and prayers!!! love you all!