Wednesday and Thursday at St. Mary's

Peri had been living with pain from fibroid tumors for many years. She is a fragile, ethereal young woman and her increasing pain had been interfering with her ability to do even the most basic chores, including caring for her children. Dr. Doug performed a hysterectomy yesterday and we know that she will return to her family in several days with renewed vigor.

Joti is a 4 year old boy from a remote village with solemn black eyes that gaze stoically out of his beautiful face. His parents waited with him more than nine hours before meeting with Dr. Arleigh. Joti has a birth complication that will result in cancer if not corrected surgically. Although this surgery is not a good fit with our doctors, we have consulted with the Tanzanian pediatric surgeon and have arranged for the procedure to be done Sunday. His parents repeated echoes of “Asanti, sana” (thank you very much) showed their relief and their renewed hope.

Yesterday we saw Peri and Joti and more than 40 other patients. Our list had more than 60 names before 9:30. Tanzanians will wait endlessly without complaint to see us. As the sky darkened, we reluctantly sent the last 20 patients home for the day at 7:15 and told them to return early the next day. With any mission trip, the unexpected can trigger changes and inventive adaptation is required to meet these challenges. Our anesthesiologist was detained and did not arrive until two hours later than expected. And we discovered the gasket to the sterilizer at St. Mary’s was broken so we did not have the ability to sterilize instruments between procedures. Working through these problems cost us precious time, which slowed our ability to see patients. We also lost Barbara as a translator around 1 pm, because she had to leave to drive to Dar es Salaam to pick up another mission team arriving from the States.

After Dr. Arleigh and Dr. Mike had met with patients, any candidates for surgery were directed to a different area to wait for Dr. Doug to examine them during his breaks from surgery. We asked the head nurse at the hospital, Mama Ana Msumari, if she could find a room for Dr. Doug to use that was separate from the two being used for clinic. She pondered the problem and applied amazing Tanzanian ingenuity and arrived at a wondrous solution. There is an outside area where we had taken our lunch breaks that resembles a large open courtyard with a small covered area on the side. A tattered sofa and two arm chairs were stored underneath the slanted roof. She directed the staff to clean the furniture and carry a desk out, which was covered with a sheet. More sheets were suspended from the eave of the covered area to create a long curtain that concealed this seating arrangement from casual view. And so Dr. Doug’s office was created!

Today we were greeted with warm smiles by the 20 patients from the day before who were sent home. Although we were delayed by a complication that required the doctor’s time to start an IV, Mama Ana was ready to help us and the patients were quickly organized and happy to see the doctors. We also began the day with an additional 13 patients that had arrived from the village and were referred to us by the Asbury medical team. Throughout the day people continued to arrive and were added to the list.

Barbara arrived back from Dar mid-afternoon and brought with her a new gasket for the sterilizer. This will make such a difference in our ability to do more surgeries in subsequent days.

Unfortunately, we met with a bit of government red tape that pulled our doctors away from clinic for more than an hour. Somehow, our mission hit the radar of an agency that decided that the proper paperwork had not been filed. If we did not remedy the problem before Friday, we were told that we would be shut down and subject to repercussions for the work already done. We suspended clinic and surgery while forms were completed and the doctors travelled to a shop to have their photos taken. We were due at Faraja Trust, a home-based heath care that works with families with HIV and Aids, at 4 pm to see patients. Because the doctors were not back at St. Mary’s until after 5, we again did not have enough time to see everyone on the list and an additional 11 people were told to return tomorrow.

Dr. Doug and Cindy stayed at St. Mary’s to continue surgeries. The other four team members arrived at Faraja Trust, only to be told that everyone had given up hope of our arrival and gone home. However, they agreed to come to St. Mary’s tomorrow and we will be sure that we are able to see them. All was not lost, though, because we left many Tanzanian shillings at Faraja Trust in exchange for the beautiful hand-dyed batik cloth that they produce, which is their main source of funds.

Afterwards, a stop was made at a local grocery store and we browsed the shelves wondering at the different foods. The owner of the Acropol hotel happened in to the store while we were there and helped us spend even more shillings as we eagerly accepted her recommendations for snacks and goodies.