4 Sept 2014 A day in Bere, although unusual

The day began as usual with breakfast then staff worship 0715 and
rounds with almost a full hospital of patients although Peds and
Maternity has been down somewhat. Then we had surgery. The first
was a little 5 yr boy with a mass at his umbilicus with drainage from
it that looked almost like bowel contents or drainage from an abcess.
We did a laparotomy and discovered solid mass that had almost
appearance of liver but very inflamed with intestines being stuck
into the mass all around. We finally got it dissected free and all
the adhesions freed but the rest of the abdomen was clean with no
adhesions. The liver itself appeared normal as did the spleen. The
mass itself was quite firm almost hard so I don’t know what this
about 10 cm mass was. Then we had another child with a large solid
mass of her eyelid (it closed her eye) which we dissected out. It
perhaps was glandular like some kind of tumor somewhat friable but did
dissect out fairly readily. Then had a man with a very large
inguinal hernia and bilateral hydrocele which turned out to be pyocele
so we did a orchiectomy and repair of the very large sliding hernia.

Then we had a call from Nick and Kelsey that they had tried to get
here driving their ambulance from Moundou but were stuck in the mud
about 15 km from Kelo (It is 45 km from Bere to Kelo) It had rained
much of the night before so the “road” was very muddy with deep water
holes and over 24 inches over the road going across the “hippo river.”
It is about a ¼ mile (about 500 meters) across. A large wave of
water would go in front of the car as we went across with boys running
ahead to show where the road was the most shallow (of course they
wanted a fee for their service). We finally got to where they were
stuck in the mud off the edge of the “road”. We were able to drag
them out with our winch on our 4 runner. The water hole in the road
by them was at least 18 inches deep. We made it back through the
mud and the river without incident to Bere. Nick and Kelsley came to
do some plumbing and electric wiring on some buildings especially
Mason’s house.

Then about midnight we had c-section for a ruptured uterus. Of
course the baby was dead. During the time we were doing the
c-section they brought in a man that was victim of a stabbing with
intestine coming out stab wounds so we had to do a laparotomy after
the c-section. We had to repair his colon and small intestine and a
large bleeder in his mesentery. His abdomen was pretty full of
blood. By the time we repaired everything it was beginning to get
daylight. Then time to start another day but maybe this one will be
quieter as they usually are.

We love to hear from each of you about your days.
Our emails are drbland@sbcglobal.net and dfbland01@gmail.com
Love. Rollin and Dolores