A baby giving birth to a baby...

So we had another birth on friday night! It was really scary though. The girl was fifteen and had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Her baby almost suffocated! It was a baby having a baby, literally. We couldn´t get her to push hard enough and Cecilia explained to her the her baby would suffocate to death if she didn´t push. And then, since she was such a small little person, Cecilia had to cut her to make room for the baby, but every time she saw the scissors coming she stopped pushing. The cutting wouldn´t have hurt if she was pushing because of all of the chemicals and hormones, but she´s 15, she shouldn´t be doing this. The baby was in the birth canal for 45 minutes, which is extremely dangerous, and when he popped out, por fin, he was completely blue and he definately had more of an alien head than the first baby. We ended up taking the mom and baby to the hospital because we needed to make sure he was okay and the mom tore really bad, but she wouldn´t sit still so that Cecilia could suture her back up so the hospital had to sedate her. Bad deal. We got the baby to cry pretty strongly, and we finally got him warm, but his extremities were still cold when they left. And then the umbilical cord was super fragil and tore really close to the skin, so we panicked a little because he could have bled to death if we hadn´t of been able to clamp it. Cecilia had to clamp it pretty close to the skin, so it´s gonna be painful for the baby and his belly button will probably be messed up. She was just too young. She had no idea how to give birth and how important it was to push! She seemed to want to give up every time it started to hurt a little. As a result her baby was very close to having died. I hope everything turns out okay. The dad was 17 or 18. Wowzers.
Saturday we didn´t end up being able to go to church because the road was impassable, but it ended up being a good thing because a family ended up coming to the clinic for church and steph had had a really good devotional that seemed to peak their interest a lot. It was along the lines of why you should be a christian type stuff. Then, we had lunch with one of our neighbors and then we walked to another neighbors and talked to them a while and they gave us curichi and 3 baby chicks. Unfortunately, the kitchen door got left open last night and pili ate the baby chicks. I feel really bad because they were a gift! We just got them and couldn´t keep them safe for one night. But I guess a dog is a dog. We also got another puppy last night! We named her lady after Lady and the Tramp, her parents are like toy poodle size, so right now she´s a month old and is about the size of a newborn rottweiler. lol. She slept with me last night, and she was starving, but she´s a little young to be eating real food. I got her to eat some mushy dog food, but she still needs milk. I´ll probably buy her some today in Pucallpa.

Happy Valentine´s Day!

Blog February 14, 2011
Happy Valentine’s Day! All in all, not really that spectacular of a day, but here Valentine’s Day is also known as Dia de Amistad, Friendship Day. So, if you don’t have a significant other, it is a day to celebrate your friendships. I must admit that today I had an excess of chocolate and I watched the chick flick of all chick flicks, “The Notebook”. It’s been raining pretty hard every night here since Saturday night, which results in us not having very many patients because the roads can be almost impassable if you get enough rain. Our home right now at km 8 has turned itself into a lake, and that makes for very interesting trips to the bathroom which sits at the back of our property. It is a true test of balance and your ability to jump over the raging creeks, in the dark. I’ve managed not to fall yet, but the day is coming, I just know it! The good thing about the rain is that it keeps things a lot cooler around here. It just makes it more difficult to travel. I only had one patient today for dental. A cute little man who needed one tooth and four roots pulled out. By the time I was done he didn’t have much more in his mouth. Sometime this week we are supposed to have a birth with a 15 year-old girl who is having her first baby. I’m a little nervous about it because she is so young, but the sonogram she brought us looks really good. That’s all for this week!

The life of a 2 year old

Surgery must be one of the most amazing things to be witness to, let alone be able to assist in a procedure! I had my first opportunity to assist in a surgery today! There was a little girl who came to our clinic that was having problems breathing because of a tumor that was obstructing her airway. It was a very sad case. She is two years old, and she needed this surgery to remove the tumor, but her family did not have the money to pay for this surgery. It was vitally important because otherwise it would eventually close off her entire airway and she would die. Among the eight of us missionaries, we came up with the $300 dollars that it would cost for the surgery. The surgeon we found is a specialist in the head and neck area, and he agreed to do the surgery at a cheaper price. The only thing that we paid for was the anesthesia and the cost of using a room for surgery. Before the surgery, I was elected to be the surgeon’s assistant, which in and of itself was pretty cool but terrifying at the same time. They sedated Celeste a little bit before they brought her back to put her under the anesthesia. She had been in the hospital for 10 days previously, so she definitely had a healthy fear of anyone in the medical profession, and she fought pretty good when you came near her. When they brought her back into the room, I was the only person who she recognized and so I had the responsibility of keeping her calm while they tried to find a vein large enough for the IV. After she was asleep they used an instrument to spread her mouth wide and the doctor began the surgery. I didn’t do very much during the surgery, but I did hold the tongue back so that he could see, and I was holding the suction to keep the area as blood free as possible.  It was pretty cool to sit there and watch that. The hardest part came when Celeste started to wake up. She was very disoriented, confused, and scared. Her mom was looking in at her from outside the window, and she started crying because she didn’t know what was wrong and she couldn’t do anything for her baby. Celeste woke up crying strongly, and she threw up a little bit. When mom was finally allowed to come in, that helped a lot to calm Celeste down, and then after we were released we rushed the family to the clinic to administer medicine for the pain that Celeste would soon feel from the surgery. The surgeon pulled out a lot of tumor from that poor child´s neck. There was still a lot more to pull out, but he stopped because he thought it was cancerous, possibly lymphoma, and she really needed to go to Lima to get it taken care of. He took out enough for us to get it analyzed to see what it really is, but he´s pretty sure whatever he took out will grow back and she´ll have to go to Lima. For now, though, she can breathe better and mom doesn´t have to wake her up when she´s sleeping to make sure that she is breathing. We should get the results back today. Life seems so unfair to give a two-year-old a problem so difficult as this. She hasn´t been on this earth for very long and she´s already fighting for her life. We´re praying that everything turns out, and hopefully she doesn´t have to go to Lima because I don´t know where the family would get the money for all of that care.