I like to keep track of all the
different procedures I have done here in Ghana as well as write about interesting
patient cases that I have seen and been a part of managing here at Baptist
Medical Centre. I was reading through a few of the cases today, and it reminded
me of how much God has shown Himself present during each of them. I am not an emotional person typically, but
recalling His intervention in the lives of so many patients at our hospital
brings tears to my eyes. I would like to recount a few of the patient stories
over the past 1-2 years in this blog post.
There was one lady who had had a
ruptured ectopic pregnancy and was bleeding heavily inside her abdomen. She had
surgery performed, which went well. The problem then arose after the surgery
when she was receiving a donated unit of blood, and she had a rare severe
reaction to the blood, causing respiratory failure (her lungs were shutting down). The oxygen level in her
body was 30% on the maximum oxygen we could give her. I tried calling the
nearest referral center- about 3 hour drive away- and they said they had
ventilators, but there were no doctors to manage them at that time. The next
closest referral hospital was about a 9-hour drive away—she would never make it
that far. I sat down with the brother and explained the poor prognosis and then
prayed with him and for the patient. After doing everything we could for her
here at BMC, I left the hospital to go home and sleep. First thing the next
day, I went to Female Ward to check on her and there was a new patient in her
bed- exactly what I had expected, she had died overnight. Then one of the
nurses asked me, “Are you looking for the lady that was in this bed before?”,
and then she pointed over to another bed, “She’s over there”. The lady was
sitting up in bed, no oxygen in place, eating an orange, and the oxygen level in
her blood was in the upper 90s. God miraculously healed this woman, and He
deserves all the praise for it!
From the end of June through mid-August
last year, I was the primary rounding doctor on Female Ward and Isolation Ward.
There are a lot of wounds in Isolation Ward, and there is a lot of necrotizing
fasciitis (an infection of the layer of tissue just above the muscle and below
the skin layers, which spreads quickly), often requiring multiple debridements (removal of dead tissue) for the same patient. I spent countless hours (I counted 30 debridements alone during
this time for necrotizing fasciitis in my procedure log) removing dead tissue
from patients’ bodies, mostly extremities, and leaving them with large open wounds.
God has designed our bodies so amazingly that many times, these patients do well
and the wounds heal. He has also made it possible for us to take skin from one
part of the body and put it on an open wound in another part of the body (known
as a skin graft) so that the large open wounds can heal faster. This just
reminds me of our Creator’s creativity. Necrotizing fasciitis and its management
also reminds me of the Gospel:
1)
The infection is like sin (often hidden under
the surface, but comes to light when it grows out of control, and leads to
death of the person if left unchecked/untreated)- every man and woman’s problem
in this world.
2)
The infection cannot be controlled by the body
itself, despite how hard it works to fight it. It requires that someone else
come and remove the infection for it- AKA Jesus dying on the cross so that our
sins can be removed if we believe in Him.
3)
Doing a skin graft on the clean, open wound
(AKA believers in Christ who have opened their hearts to Jesus’ atoning sacrifice
and have therefore been made clean) is like Jesus giving us the righteousness
of God (2 Corinthians 5:21- “For our sake He made Him [Jesus] to be sin who
knew no sin, so that in Him [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God.”).
Jesus came from His perfect home (heaven; AKA donor site for the skin graft),
covered us with His righteousness (recipient site for the skin graft) to help
us look more like Him in time.
Not all women here deliver in the
hospital. In fact, many of them deliver at home. Sometimes, these women have
complications that force them to visit a hospital for care. One of these complications
is that placental parts remain inside the uterus after delivery, which commonly
leads to severe anemia from excessive bleeding as well as infection. In a
one-week period of time in November last year, there were 3 women who came in
with severe anemia, 2 of them septic. All of them had already received blood transfusions
at outside facilities before coming to BMC. Two of them delivered 5 days ago at
home, and one of them delivered 12 days ago by C-section at another hospital.
All of them needed two uterine curettages each (scraping out the retained placental tissue that is inside the uterus), two of them were too unstable for the first procedure to
receive anesthesia, and all of them had to have their first procedure stopped
early because of excessive bleeding. By God’s grace, each one of them survived
and recovered fully.
More stories to come shortly...
