Dr. Holman, Zain, Anthony, and Jon all wake up at 5am for a sweat session in the gym. Around 6:50 we all meet in the hotel restaurant to eat breakfast together and discuss the upcoming surgeries. Hasan our bus driver arrives right on time, and we pile in the bus. We arrive at the hospital and go straight to the ORs. Dr. Holman, Zain, Michelle, and Anthony go and make rounds in the surgical wards, while Nadia and Rebecca set up the room and help get our first patient ready for surgery.
Our first patient of the mission trip is a 34 year old named Godwin, who has been suffering with back pain and right leg pain for a couple of years. He has been unable to work because of the pain for at least five years, and Dr. Holman knew a laminectomy could give him a good chance to get back to working and providing for his family. The first surgery of the day was a success and after an extremely quick turnaround, our next patient was brought into the OR.
The second patient was a very sweet lady named named Gertrude who was needing a one level fusion of two of her lumbar vertebrates. Jon stepped up to the role of the X-ray tech along with his role of a Medtronic rep while in Uganda. We are lucky enough to have a working Carm machine for this mission trip. Last year the Carm was not working, making surgeries a little more difficult. Gertrude's surgery lasted a couple hours, and then it was time to clean our instruments. Here in Uganda, we have to manually wash and sort our own instruments to be sterilized. With the help of the whole team, we were able to leave the hospital around 6pm.
We asked Hasan to take us to the Agip restaurant for dinner. We shared delicious appetizers and then ate our ordered meals. With full bellies, we headed back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.
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