My First Surgery in the Bush

We only had to travel 3 hours to get to Catala, but the conditions were much different. One could only get there with 4 wheel drive. So now I finally understand what all the hype is about in "going muddin' " in a 4x4. Yes! That was fun.
Here sits the crowd that awaited me at the mission hospital. Many were blind from glaucoma and other problems that I could not fix in the bush, so we narrowed them down to 5 patients with operable cataracts.

 This woman had surgery with another group and did not have a lens implant during the surgery. I had the pleasure of fitting here with +12.00 glasses. She was happy, don't let the serious face fool you. Thanks to the donor of these glasses, whoever you may be!

Wow, this was my operating room.  Wind and flies blowing through the windows, not the last time I will swat flies in my operating room I'm sure. We brought a portable generator to power the light in my microscope and instrument sterilizer.

The conditions are difficult here. Our mobil microscope is not very good, I'm hoping for a new one.  My first surgery actually did not go as well as i would like as I had vitreous loss. The cataract was actually the most difficult of the day. The normal lens capsule is easily torn, but this one was so dense I had to use scissors to cut it, as my needle wouldn't cut it do to fibrosis. I think the posterior capsule was also fibrotic and scarred onto the lens as when I removed the lens there was a large hole in the posterior capsule and vitreous coming to the wound. The rest of the surgeries went very well, but I was really worried about that first case all night. However, God took that which I thought was not good and turned it into something beautiful. This woman was so happy; smiling, singing and dancing after I removed the patch. Actually she was the most happy of all the patients all day, and her eye actually looked very good.

I actually really enjoy checking people for glasses now, especially underneath the Baobab tree! I despised glasses exams in my residency training, but now I'm very happy that I learned this skill. Many people here just need glasses. Now I just need more glasses to give out during these site visits. Thanks to all of you who have donated glasses to our project, we are eagerly awaiting there arrival in Angola!

Lori has found that bubbles are a great icebreaker for the kids.

These trips are not all hard work. We also got to go hiking as well.

Lori really wants to put one of these huts in our backyard as a play house for the boys.

Angola is surprising us as we get to explore new areas. The terrain varies from arid desert, to tropical forest, and mountain plains. While the mountains aren't snow capped and the highest is somewhere around 7,000 ft above sea level, they are still great to climb. Pictured is the summit of a small peak with views of one of the highest mountains in the background. That is our next challenge.

On this trip we also took a stop in another place called Kalukembe to attend a memorial service of another missionary that will be greatly missed, JPB's (our mission director) mother.  She was nearly 100 years old, and served as a nurse in Kalukembe for decades. It was a moving service, as Angolans shared how Anny Brechet had impacted their lives and brought the gospel to their country.

While we were there, we also got to visit an interesting hopsital.

This hospital was one of the first missionary hospitals in Angola, and has had many great missionary doctors call it home for a time. If you ever get a chance to read "The sword and the scalpel" a book about Robert Foster, MD, it describes his time at this hospital. However, it has been without a doctor for decades. The work was disrupted by the war here, and even though there has been peace since 2002, no doctor has been resident here since the mid 1990's. Good news however, we had the priviledge of meeting Dr Batacou, who had come only 1 week previously as the first full time doctor.

 I hope to come back to this hospital someday soon to do cataract surgery in this operation room.

 Look at this smile! Zeke used this bathroom even with spiders and frogs watching him do his business. Also the bucket on the floor is the flush, you need to fill the bucket with water first, and then pour it down for the flush. This is a common means of personal hygiene here.

While there has not been any full time doctor here, the nurses here are very experienced and even do surgeries (as shown Above).

This is the pediatrics ward. The conditions are very crowded. The staff to patient ratio is not very good. Many patients have terrible diseases/injuries from which they will not recover. But despite the sometimes dire conditions, the gospel is preached to the patients and there is a genuine sense of hope throughout the hospital.

Thanks for reading,

John