February 6th


Today was a nice day, in a way. We had breakfast at about 7:15ish
(normally we do it later on the weekend but the engineers were
leaving this morning). After they finished up and headed out I gave
Kelsey, Kim, and her sons a tour of the team house and the hospital
before seeing them off. After they left I did the breakfast dishes
then moved the fold out beds from the house where Kim and the
others stayed. Tom, Emily and Laura were too busy at the hospital
to go to church. Later, I decided to read my bible, while I was
reading my bible I accidently fell asleep for a little over an hour and
only woke up when Emily and Laura got to the house for lunch. So I
had to get up and get lunch made really quickly. I just made some
chicken soup and threw in a can of mixed vegetables, it was actually
really good. After lunch we went down to the hospital because there
was a man who had symptoms suggesting a possible bowel
perforation. So Tom was going to do an exploratory laparotomy
(sorry to the squeamish) which is where they cut into the abdomen
and “explore” the abdominal region to determine the source of
abdominal problems. I got to observe and it was absolutely
fascinating. I had less trouble watching this procedure than
watching a c-section. I won’t give the details for the sake of all of
you who don’t want to know, but I really enjoyed it (as morbid as
that might be). He did have a hole in his intestine. I just hope now
that he makes it alright after having to go through the operation,
but that’s to be seen. The procedure finished around 5:30 so after
getting him all settled in the men’s ward we headed back to the
house. I made dinner for us tonight. I made chicken chili, I think
it’s really good and everyone told me that they enjoyed it. After we
ate we spent a while just sitting around the table talking. At about
8 or so we headed down to the hospital to see the man and check
on how he is doing. Not much change since earlier other than that
he had woken up and was aware. They checked on a couple other
patients while we were down there. We stopped in the pediatric
ward. Still not a ward I like very much, there is a little girl with
malaria and meningitis and not doing very well, that always make
me sad. I know, I’m a glutton for punishment, going there knowing
how it makes me feel, but it’s also too interesting to avoid. After
that we headed back up to the house where Tom and I spent a
while talking. Then we realized we’d forgotten to clean the water
filter and so we took care of that. That’s about all for my day today;
it was pretty interesting but not too busy. Have a great night!

Blessings from Kamakwie,
Ryan Brooks