Speaking of hearts, look what I found on Aussie Nurse Deb Louden's blog, "Deb's Heart in Africa" as she serves on the Africa Mercy in Madagascar. All I can think is, "You go my friend!" or maybe "Good job, mate!"
At work in the ward one
night shift, it was just past
midnight when my co-worker’s patient started screaming her lungs out. It
was a 5
year old girl, who’d had a cyst removed from her tongue only a few hours
prior. She was writhing in her bed, screaming in the darkness. Her
grandma and
the Malagasy day crew working with us were both holding her down in the
bed. Her
nurse went over to her bed in the darkness, behind the blue curtain that
shielded
the light from the patients. Her nurse had a tiny baby already in her
arms, as
she was just about to feed her. I went behind the curtain also to see
what was
going on. At seeing her patient’s distress and not knowing what was
causing it,
the nurse turned to me and passed me the baby. I looked around for
somewhere to
put this tiny baby girl. There were no other day crew present as they
were
eating their midnight dinner, so I hurried back to the baby’s bed where
her
mama was. I tapped the mama on the shoulder, “Azafady mama” (excuse me) and I dumped the baby into her arms and hurried
away.
The screaming and writhing of this 5yo continued and we
shone a flashlight into her mouth to see if we could find the problem. There
was something in there. Was it a
nasogastric tube? I thought, no, she
doesn’t have one. OH MY GOSH, it’s a
worm! I could see the worm moving around in her mouth as we shone the light
inside.
I left the drama at the bedside and went and put gloves on,
wondering how on earth I was going to get the worm out without breaking it into
pieces since it was so soft and instruments to reach it would be hard and sharp.
I called another ward for a third nurse to come for back-up as this little girl
was just beside herself, terrified.
I asked God for help as I walked back to the bedside where
the nurse, day crew and grandma were struggling to keep the girl in her bed as
she fought them, gagging, coughing, screaming, saliva flinging in every direction.
When we turned the flashlight back on and shone it in her mouth, the worm had
moved from inside her mouth up the back of her throat and was in her nose. In
fact, the worm was looped in and out her nose, partly down her throat but part
of the body hung outside the nose and so I scooped my gloved hand in and with a
swift move, pulled the whole worm out of her nose. I held it gently with my
thumb and index finger as we told our little girl, “vita, vita vita” (it’s finished, it’s finished, it’s finished). She
eventually calmed down and the wild, terrified look in her eyes calmed and she
fell asleep again. The worm died immediately and we left it in a kidney basin
for the doctors to view in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment