Shanksteps #44
9-4-06
Please come to the hospital I have a number of
patients for you to see (as translated from French).
It was Sabbath morning and I was trying to sleep in.
I went in to the hospital and found a “few†patients
(nine!) in the ER. This is the season when all the
things from last year, mainly onions and peanuts, are
sold at high prices just before the new crops start to
develop. Onions buy for $14 a large sac and at this
season sell for $40. So this family had sold their
onions this week and had “made†about $2000. Wow that
was impressive! What we suspect is that people
watching these transactions and noted which family
made a large sum of money, then told their Nigerian
friends who came an robbed this family. So the
robbers showed up in a vehicle, shot a gun in the air
to scare all the neighbors from helping, then brutally
beat up the family till they handed over the money.
So they all arrived together, penniless and with many
injuries.
– wife #1 severely beat on head, loosing
consciousness, with multiple cuts from the stick
hitting her head
– wife #2 with the same injuries
– father of house, multiple cuts over head from
beating and cuts on hands from defending himself
against a knife, contusions over shoulders, back,
face, arms
– Son with loss of consciousness from severe blow to
head, I could not determine if he had a skull fracture
or not, seemed to be slow of speech.
– One neighbor had the guts to help, man severely beat
on face with zygomatic arch fractures, as best I could
see on the x-ray- nondisplaced
– Son with contusions over thigh and probable medial
maleolus fracture they refused to let me x-ray.
– worker of family with small finger fracture at base
and contusions everywhere
– worker with facial contusions
– young boy with minor contusions
It took us about 4 hours to suture all the cuts, look
at all the films they allowed us to take, and
prescribe medications.
I went back to the ER to see if there was anything
left to do and two new were in the ER. One was 17 you
girl with an acute abdomen (surgical abdomen). She
had been seen in Maroua and said she had a hernia and
needed surgery but the surgeon left for Yaounde. I
think they have more surgeons there so it not all
clear to me. The other one was an old woman with
complete bowl obstruction for 3 days, also needing
surgery. The younger girl I operated on after getting
something to eat and drink. She had perforated
appendicitis with pus everywhere. Her father is
influential in Mokolo and could give good or bad
publicity for our hospital. After finishing her I saw
a couple more children. One with malaria and
convulsions, and another with dysentery and malaria.
After admitting them I headed for home. I ate supper
and headed to bed. Just after crawling in bed there
was another knock! (Not what I wanted) Audrey was
already asleep so I headed back in. I found another
convulsing child with what I suspected was malaria and
another child who had a cough. Father demanded a shot
of Ampicillin and to go home. Because that always
works for a cough. By then I was not feeling very
amiable so I told him he needed to be admitted because
I thought he had epiglotitis (infection of the throat
and epiglottis) but he refused so I gave him oral
medications and they left. I got home about 3AM and
had difficulty falling asleep. Strange how one can be
so tired and not be able to sleep.
Sunday is our busiest day. We saw a number of
patients in clinic. At about 10 AM I finally
convinced a man to let me do surgery on him. He had
refused for 4 days of complete obstruction. Finally
he felt so bad he let me. He had ruptured
appendicitis and fortunately I only had to take his
appendix. Then the old woman was not being
decompressed with the nasogastric tube so I convinced
her family to let me operate and the government
official of that area agreed to pay. I found a pelvic
tumor blocking the large intestine. It had already
spread so performed an ostomy to relieve her
obstruction. She looks 100 and is very malnourished.
I pray she survives the insult. I finished her about
7PM. I went home and dropped dead from exhaustion.
The first couple weeks we were back things were slow
and now they are picking up. I guess God was giving
us time to get our internal clocks set back to
Cameroon before we picked up a lot of work. We are
thankful for the work as it helps our hospital try to
run in the black. And we thank God we have the energy
to keep up. Please keep us in your prayers as we
serve Him here! Shanks