Playing Catchup

So its been almost a week since the last time I have written anything! I knew my diligence wouldn’t last. I had the same problem on my mission as well. Journal writing is just so tasking sometimes especially when there are much better things that I would rather be doing like reading or spending time with friends. But I know that I will be grateful in the future when I can go back and read about my adventures. So shall we go back to Thursday?

Thursday May 14th was actually a really cool day! It was the first time I was in the St. Thomas Eye Clinic. I first helped out and observed pre-surgery examinations with Dr. Ese. He seemed really young to be an Ophthalmologist but everyone here looks younger than they actually are. The other week we helped a woman that was 100 years old and she didn’t look older than 80. After that I went upstairs to change for surgeries! I changed into scrubs and went downstairs to the “theatre,” which is what they call the operating room. In the prep room there were a couple nurses prepping patients for surgery. It was a small room where organization was not the highest priority. After putting on a mask and hair net I watched as they numbed the eye(s) with lidocaine. I couldn’t believe the size of needle they used! Despite being a small gauged needle, maybe 28 or 30, it was long, around 3.5 inches. They took iodine swabs and cleaned the area under the eye then inserted the needle under the eye and all the way to the back of the eye. What surprised me more I think was how calm every patient was. They didn’t even flinch or squirm at all. But I think that was either because of the culture of doing what you're told or you’ll be beaten or the fact that nearly all of them couldn’t see out of that eye so they didn’t know what was coming. After the anesthesia the nurses put make-shift pressure bandages over their eyes but placing gauze on the eye and a tennis ball strapped to a pantie hose that was tied around the head. This kept slight pressure on the eye. 

The surgeries were very interesting. I was observing Dr. Gyasi (pronounced Jesse). He is a great guy! He loved answering all of my questions and was more than willing to show me anything I asked. I saw about 4 cataract surgeries in the space of an hour or so. The technology they have is definitely not what we have in North America but they made due. They were making certain tools from bending the needles of syringes to scrape away thick cataracts. I’m not sure if this was a well known technique or just their way of saving money but it worked. The cataracts I saw were very hard and I may never see any like them back home because people simply don’t let them get that bad. I really enjoyed watching the surgeries and I could spend much more time getting into the details of other techniques and things they did that were intriguing. 

Friday May 15th

We finished early and were back at the Telecentre by 4pm. Now there was talk that morning of going to the temple with everyone but it was just Austin, Daniel and myself at the hotel. The rest had the day off after spending the former part of the week on an overnight outreach. We weren’t sure if they were expecting us to meet them at the temple or if they were going to be coming back from swimming or wherever they were and then we all head out together. By the time we had decided that they were expecting us to meet them there it was too late. We wouldn't have made it there in time for the 6:30 session. I was kind of bummed that we didn’t get to go but there will be other days to go to the temple.