Back to the Busy Life

Friday started off a little quiet for me. I had time to unpack in the morning and then helped Suzy with a few things. After dinner, the clinic got busy. We had several emergencies come in. I wandered over there because I heard a woman was in labor with twins. It has been a while since I helped with a birth so I though I was excited to see it. When I got there I found Caleb treating a woman with a suspected case of meningitis. She was fighting their attempts to start an IV so I helped hold her down. Eventually she settled down, but continued to get worse. She had a high fever so I wiped her down with a cool compress. Unfortunately, there was nothing more we could do for and I felt so helpless as she died while I sat with her on her bed.

There was another cattle raid and a gunshot victim came in. He was shot in the leg and arm. The arm had a fracture that requires surgery in Wau, but Dennis was able to suture the leg injury. I am getting better at seeing bad injuries and was able to hold the flashlight for him as he did his work.

The woman with twins gave birth around 2:00am. Stephanie was worried there was may be a problem as she struggled to hear two heartbeats. Fortunately, two girls came into the world, small but healthy. They were identical twins (same placenta), but one was much bigger than the other (2.9 kgs and 2.2 kgs). I was in charge of documenting the events as they happened. Later I held one of the babies and had to rub her back to make her cry. They were a little gray and Stephanie wanted lots of air to get in their lungs. They were hard to make cry!



(Baby 1 - the bigger one)



(Baby 2)

Never a dull moment in Tonj!