July 10th (Tuesday)

The day has come. It is our last full day here at Chitokoloki! It has gone by so quickly and we have been able to experience so much in the last 5 weeks, it truly has been amazing!

After getting ready for the day we thought that we would go up to get a picture in front of the sign outside the hospital of the 3 of us. As we were nearing the church building I turned as I heard Dorothy shouting after us, “CASSANDRA, NICOLE, FIONA! Where are you going?” I answered back , “We’re going to the hospital.” She asked, “is Fiona still coming with me?” I told her yes. She then asked what Fiona was wearing but then saw that Fiona was indeed wearing a skirt and not “slacks” and that Nicole and I were in scrubs. We told her that Fiona would be back shortly.

We went up to Kariba and asked Oliver the guard at the door to take our picture by the door/sign. Although for some reason the flash on my camera quit working so I had to put it on the setting with no flash… As we were taking the picture Dr. Lipsi walked up and he also took one with his phone. Then I asked if he could join us for one. I said, “can we get a picture with the famous Dr. Lipsi?” As he came over to stand next to me he said, “don’t you mean the infamous Dr. Lipsi?” We all laughed and we said “no, no, you’ve taugh us so much! Thank you for everything!” I checked the camera and it turns out that an unskilled photographer took the photos… They weren’t the best but there really wasn’t anyone else around to take them that we trusted, so we had to live with the lower quality of photos.

Fiona then hurried back to Dorothy’s house to join her to go see chronic patients and administer praziquantel at the Sowfuku School. Nicole and I along with Dr. Lipsi went to devotions. Gordon was back to teach and when we were praying at the end I prayed that me camera (rather, my Mum’s camera) would be working fine again. I tried it after we had finished and the flash popped up again with no issues, I love when God is pleased to answer even our little prayers! I was so happy and thankful, I was going to have a hard time explaining to Mum what was wrong and how her good camera that I was suppose to take care of quit working properly. With no flash/no auto setting it greatly affects the quality of pictures (especially in lower lighting).

We went to the ICU for ward rounds, while there Alison suggested we could go get the first patient for theatre. We went to theatre to check the board and saw JR. She said the first patient would be baby Grace. So we went to go get her from the maternity ward but couldn’t find her, after asking around (as the staff working were not sure) the other patients said that Grace had passed in the night. We were shocked and went to tell JR, she took it in stride though and just asked that we go get the ticket. I think she was anticipating that baby Grace wouldn’t survive very long with all of her issues. We went and got the ticket and then go the next patient for theatre after telling Dr. McAdam that Grace had died in the night.

So the next patient was a woman who needed a small skin graft to close an open wound after the removal of tumour on her shoulder we had assisted with previously. Nicole and I prepped the patient and got her all ready for surgery by ourselves! I started a beautiful IV cannula, Nicole got the documentation done and we set up the EKG leads, BP, O2, etc. Just before this however, we got a selfie with Jack, Kayumbo, and Joyce. The skin graft went well and Nicole and I helped with documenting and anaesthetics. Next up I assisted Dr. McAdam with a urethral dilation in the upper theatre room, it was kind-of painful to watch… We left the man with a foley catheter in so that the suprapubic one could potentially be removed if the other started draining.

We had our tea break at about that time as it was after 10am. A little later JR, Alison, and Kate joined us. They had been apparently doing CPR for an hour and a half for a woman who was in the women’s ward. They did it long enough to get the full unit of blood infused and reassess and hopefully successfully resuscitate her. It was not successful. So everyone was grateful for a break. We took some pictures with Dr. Ros before going back to work.

We then assisted JR with an esophageal dilation. This happens every 6 weeks for this patient in particular as she drank acid in an attempted suicide. She survived and it caused scarring and strictures to the esophagus and damaged her vocal cords and trachea as well so she has a tracheostomy. Nicole assisted JR by handing her the tubes from sizes small to big to insert into the esophagus. I was holding the airway for stabilization (oxygen tubing over the trach) as well as suctioning when needed. This procedure was done under ketamine. Near the end she (the patient) started fighting us a bit, Nicole held her down with her one arm and I held the ther, but she was also kicking her legs so much that she was nearly going of the bed. I stretched my lower body along the bed to keep her on and I asked for some help from the others in the room. Thankfully, Kayumbo had just walked back into the theatre and was able to hold her legs down so that we could finish. We finished the procedure and JR gave the other Zambian nursing staff in the room a talking to… as they should have stepped in to give us a hand to keep the patient still when they saw we needed help rather than watching us.We then helped with a BTL, Nicole scrubbed in to assist with it and I was just supporting and helping with anaesthesia.

We then went home for lunch, however, it ended up being a bit later than the usual time of 1pm. The reason was that Dr. McAdam allowed Queen to get some practice by finishing the closing for the patient who was having the BTL. So Queen was a little slower than normal as she had only done sutures a few times. It’s so awesome how the missionary doctors and nurses are always wanting to help further the other staff’s education and expose them to new experiences to help them further their knowledge. They did the same with us as visiting nursing students. Dr. McAdam and Dr. Lipsi had gone at lunch time and we finished up with the BTL patient. We had leftovers that we had to try and finish as we would be leaving the next day for home! After lunch Nicole and I went to see Ruth about a few things. We collected our wallets from their safe in Gordon’s office, we told Ruth about Fiona’s broken bed, and gave Ruth a box that Fiona made up with gifts to give friends who live around Chingola, where she used to live.

We returned to the hospital after we had finished with our errands. There was one more surgery scheduled. It was a hysterectomy. The woman needed the hysterectomy because her uterus had fibroids (they were very large). It was a fascinating surgery and Dr. McAdam and Dr. Lipsi worked together and Nicole and I were helping with documenting/monitoring vitals and anaesthesia. Dr. Lipsi held up the uterus for me to take a picture and he did it gladly, haha! I was so fascinated and hadn’t seen anything like it so I wanted to take a picture. I also helped Dr. Lipsi with a small procedure. We were moving a small lipoma from a man’s flank we gave him local anaesthesia and Dr. Lipsi removed the lipoma with skillful use of the scalpel while I used the retractors. During the procedure Dr. Ros came by to speak to me she asked if we had someone picking up our bags tomorrow to bring them to the hangar, I said no, so she volunteered to drive her truck over and get us and our things tomorrow morning.

After we were done the surgery Nicole and I returned to the Annex and did some cleaning, tidying, we showered, and ate. I also ran to capture the last African sunset over the Zambezi river.

We then hurried off to bible reading… Fiona still wasn’t back yet and Nicole and I were worried and felt bad that Dorothy was so late on Fiona’s last full day. However, Fiona joined us halfway through the bible reading -we left a note on the kitchen table so she would know where we had gone. After the bible reading we were all invited to Chris and Alison’s house to play games. We played animals, the game where if you aren’t careful or quick enough you can get hit with a rolled up newspaper. When we played animals we changed it up a little and had to do animal noises rather than call the name of the animal. It was pretty funny! Apparently a giraffe’s noise is “munch, munch” ahaha, Oh Boston! He’s a funny guy. Everyone who was there: Alison, Chris, Boston, Joey, Kate, Owen, Janice, JR, Fiona, Nicole, and I. We played Rook, Uno, and made sure to get a picture with Owen! As we were heading out and saying goodbye we gave everyone their cards that we had written the other day.

We left around 11:30pm, when we got back to our house I began my packing. Yeah, I hadn’t started yet, haha! I was able to pack everything fairly quickly and was done by 12:30ish. Then went to bed to end a very busy last full day. Wow, was I ever going to miss this place and all of the people I have met here!//