Several weeks ago a patient arrived at the hospital. She was a nurse from another hospital who was in her 50s and had a colon cancer. The surgeon believed her cancer was resectable, meaning it could be removed and possibly cure her. We admitted her a couple days before surgery to begin preparing her for the surgery. One of the new interns (Zimbabwean doctors in their first year after medical school) wrote the orders to admit her to the hospital and was exceptionally thorough. We usually minimize the pre-op work-up because of limited resources, but the poor intern was too new to know that. So they ordered a test to check the patient's bleeding risk during surgery. It showed that the patient had a bleeding disorder. We gave her medicines that might fix it and then checked again on the day of surgery. The test results were still abnormal, so I talked with the patient and convinced her that we should delay surgery and try to find out what was going on. Every day as I came by her bed she would ask me if I would pray with her. Her English was very good and we talked about the things happening to her body and about the surgery. Unfortunately further tests suggested that her problem was not correctable. So after a week of talking and praying daily with her and her family they decided that they wanted us to attempt the surgery. We managed to get 4 units of blood for the patient (which is really hard to get in Zimbabwe), and took her to the OR. The surgery lasted nearly 3 hours and she did well at the beginning, but as we were nearly finished her blood pressures began to drop and her heart started to race. We finished and she felt cold when I touched her, but the anesthetist assured me she was hanging on. Hers was the last surgery of the day, so I left and went home only to find out later that night that her heart stopped 5 minutes after surgery. I feel like I lost a friend.
That same week I also had a 6 day old and an 11 day old who died, as well as a 17 year old with malaria who also died. It may have been the hardest week of my time here. I appreciate those of you who saw my brief prayer request on Facebook and prayed for me, and those of you who have been praying for me regularly. Daily I see things that can make me feel God is somewhere else, but He has sustained me through these things in answer to your prayers.
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