Sunday, February 18, 2007
Bill Frist's errand of mercy
Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is in Africa on a charitable mission, donating his services as a surgeon to help people in desperate conditions. He is also blogging the trip. It is fascinating and heart-wrenching stuff regardless of your political views. Here is one example among several recent posts, obviously written by the Senator:
On arrival we were told by another surgeon, “Change of plans … we have an emergency life-or-death case.” A 22 year old Kipsigis tribesman had come in having been shot in the head with an arrow. The arrow, still present but firmly lodged deeply in the man’s skull, entered posteriorly at the base of the neck and penetrated about 7 inches toward his nose. It would prove to be a full and fulfilling day....
Well … I’ve removed knives from the heart, treated on more occasions than I’d like gun shot wounds to the chest, but I have NEVER seen a patient shot in the head with an arrow (Apparently there was a tribal dispute over some land. Until today. (It’s a long way from the floor of the U.S. Senate.)
I have included some pictures of Kisma which tell the whole story of the operation. As you can see the arrow was removed successfully without hemorrhage, although the position of the arrow, with the broad penetrating arrow head, made the surgical exposure very difficult.
Unfortunately, I could not locate the aforementioned pictures of this procedure on Bill Frist's blog.
Another bit:
We changed into our scrubs in the newly constructed operating pavilion in rural Kenya and said hello to Kibet (who we had examined last night) just before he was put to sleep for his surgery. We would do his case first as the emergency patient was being prepared for surgery by another surgical team. A last look at the x-rays and then out to the scrub sink to wash our hands for 10 minutes … no different than in the US.
Kibet was explored through a left thoracotomy (chest incision). There were a lot of adhesions surrounding the lung that had to be taken down sharply. The large mass inside the young boy’s chest was isolated and entered, with tuberculosis pus spilling into the chest cavity. The infected, crumbling, mushy bone of the spine was excised and a bone graft taken from the boy’s hip was inserted after extensive debridement of the infected wound. The healthy bone graft was wedged into position to replace the necrotic bone, with a few bits of rib inserted to fill the surrounding area. He was placed in a full chest cast to ensure stability. I had never seen Pott’s disease so extensive, literally eating away the spine with the abscess mass pushing on the boy’s spine which explained his paralysis. But today’s successful decompression should allow Kibet to walk again. It will take a couple of months for full recovery. But later in the day when we visited him in the recovery room he was smiling without pain.
And another:
I won’t get too much into the medical aspects, but have to mention one patient. Kala is an 11 year old boy who in the middle of the night about 2 weeks ago was awakened by a hyena that had broken into his one-room mud hut. The hyena had attacked his older brother, amputating 3 of his fingers and biting off a huge section of his back. The hyena attacked his grandfather and then Kala. (The tribal people explained to me that this is unusual behavior for a hyena – they usually bite once then back off to assess whether or not a carcass is dead …but not on this night.) His grandfather began to bleed profusely from his neck wound. Kala was bitten in the face with a huge section of his left cheek, mouth and lip bitten off. The old man died on the one hour journey to the hospital but Kala survived. He was operated on today by two volunteer surgeons from World Medical Mission (Samaritans Purse) who had come to operate at Tenwek for 2 weeks from Massachusetts and Illinois (They had done so on four previous occasions as well). His face and lip and mouth have been totally reconstructed (see picture) and he can live now a normal life, saved by the grace of others… volunteer doctors, a mission hospital, World Medical Mission, the pilots who bring the doctors here.
For more of that sort of thing, go to the main page of Senator Frist's blog and just keep scrolling. And while you're there, do note that the Senator's "personal blogroll" is only seven blogs long...
3 Comments:
By 
Purple Avenger, at
Sun Feb 18, 03:06:00 AM:
I wonder how long before Edwards realized Africa is a vast untapped continent ripe for waves of malpractice lawsuits?
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Feb 18, 07:32:00 AM:
Purple Avenger, that was funny!
By Tiger, at
Sun Feb 18, 07:36:00 AM:
At least Frist is back doing what he's good at, thank goodness.
'Cause it sure wasn't the Senate! : )
