Infection

April 24, 2011

During the clinic we didn’t have too many unusual episodes. Moslty the usual bichos meds, vitamins, the occasional cough, and maybe some UTIs. But nothing out of the ordinary. About mid-afternoon on Easter Sunday a little girl and her mother showed up in triage. The girl had a crutch and a bandage around her thigh. She had trouble walking and couldn’t sit in the triage chair because he leg wouldn’t bend. I conducted the usual triage and the mother informed me that the girl, Narita, had had an accident and wanted the Doc to look at her leg.

A few minutes later I went upstairs to deliver some triage papers to the Doc. I walked in to see Narita sitting on a cot in the Doc’s office. He was examining her leg. I set the papers down and stepped out of the room. But curiosity took hold of me and I decided to go back .Narita had stabilizers in her thigh. They had been placed a year earlier and had never been taken out. Narita had tenderness around the stabilizing nails and you could smell infection.

The Doc told her he was going to take them out and that he would put her under so she wouldn’t feel anything. She was crying from fear and a little pain. Rachel and I went in search to find IV materials and some meds. After several trips to the posta (town clinic) we were ready. By this time Jackson, a former missionary and current 4th year med student, arrived just in time to be the anesthesiologist. Narita was put under and the Doc started prying away. It looked pretty graphic as the bars moved back and forth through her leg. After some more prying he finally just grabbed both sides and pulled it out with his bare hands.

The stabilizers were out and the cleanup began. It was a little stressful because we were all afraid of infecting the bone. After a little while Narita came to and was smiling. She was a sweet girl. We finished just in time to watch the boys play soccer. It was almost as if the surgery hadn’t happened.

It was good to see the boys all playing together. It warmed my heart and also saddened me knowing this would be on of the last times I would watch them play altogether. Afterwards the girls wanted to play volleyball. I was literally dragged onto the court to play with them. I like playing for fun, but I’m not good enough to compete and I don’t like to play when people are too serious, because I know I´ll just frustrate them. Anyway, I played awfully and sure enough frustrated a person or two, I quickly switched out and spent the rest of the evening cheering from the sidelines.