Wednesday morning at KATH

Today will be the fourth day of surgery for the clinical team. After this, there's only one more before we begin to close up shop and start getting ready to head home. They've so far operated on six children and hope to do six more (including the one they just started). Their days have been long, arriving at the hospital around 7:15 and returning to the hotel as late as 9 pm. Even still, I can tell they all wish they could do more while they're here; the need is great, but the resources are limited.

During morning rounds, the team reviewed the progress of the three patients in the ICU, made recommendations for how their care should proceed today and discussed plans to move them to C5, the inpatient pediatric ward where the other three patients are recovering. As we've passed the mid-point of the trip, you can see that they've fallen into a rhythm that would be familiar to anyone who has seen them on the Cardiac ICU at Children's. Medical terms and recommendations flow quickly and easily, plans are made and necessary medications and equipment are gathered.

C5 is a bit of a different story. There are often multiple children in each bed (this isn't the case in the section where our patients are; they each have their own bed), mothers rest on the floor next to their children's beds and it is generally noisier and more active than what you see in the U.S. Still, you can see that the doctors and nurses are doing their best to care for their patients.

David, Favour and Dora, the three the patients who have had surgery and were moved to C5, seem to be doing quite well, especailly considering it's only been, at most, two full days since their operations. In another example of the amazing job the team is doing to plan for the care of these children after we leave, David is about to transition to medications that the team got donated to ensure that each child has enough to cover them for a full year after their surgery. They're less expensive than the meds that children have in the U.S., but are often more expensive than the families here can afford.

I spent some time talking with David's mother, Caroline. She told me that David has gotten out of bed to do some walking (this helps speed the recovery process) and has been talking and playing games. Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

"We're happy he had surgery. For 10 years we went to the hospital every month. It's very stressful for the mother. I run a small schoool and it's hard to work continuously when your child is sick."

"The school term is 60 days. Before, he was only able to go to about 40 of them. I think now he'll be able to go to about 90%."

"We'll need to put a lot of effort into his academic life. The foundation is not good because he has been sick. He'll have problems with math and science because of the lack of consistency. But his memory is sharp. And he likes computers, so I hope something good will come of that."

"After many prayers, God used you to fill a great need in our lives. It hasn't been easy. We hope God gives us the ability to continue to do this."

"Since we won't be here [in the hospital] long, we have to work very hard in our house to make sure he is taken care of."

"We appreciate [the surgery] so much. We hope eveyone who contributed lives to be 100 and is never sick."

Check out a gallery of images from today's rounds.

- Matt Cyr