![\"kikori_hospital\"](\"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/53\/2015\/12\/kikori_hospital-e1451444464473.jpg\")
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I just wanted to give you guys one last way-overdue update on the last\u00a0two weeks I spent in Papua New Guinea. We didn\u2019t have internet in Kikori\u00a0my last two weeks, but I have so many great stories that I want to tell\u00a0y\u2019all about\u2026so read this at your own risk; it\u2019s long enough to be a\u00a0short novel. I\u2019m still excited about the trip, even writing about it two\u00a0weeks after-the-fact.<\/p>\n
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Kikori is another hospital operated by Gulf Christian Services in the\u00a0Gulf Province of PNG, about four hours down the river from Kapuna. It\u2019s\u00a0really a busy hospital\u2013seventy beds and they are usually filled. It\u2019s\u00a0hard to imagine one doctor being able to take care of all the patients.\u00a0There had been no doctor at Kikori for a year before Dr. Ovoi started\u00a0(and she started on the same day we did). Apparently one of the big\u00a0struggles that the hospital has is keeping physicians there\u2014many plan to\u00a0come and never show up; others leave after a couple of weeks. Prior to\u00a0our arrival, a nursing officer by the name of Sister Sara had been\u00a0running the hospital. She was an absolute saint. Sara somehow managed to\u00a0be a mother, a wife, head of the hospital, and survive being called\u00a0three or four times every night. She confessed to us that she and her\u00a0husband want to move to an area with better schools for their daughters,\u00a0but know that they are needed at the hospital. She is an amazing woman.<\/p>\n
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The community was pretty small, but was a little more spread out than\u00a0Kapuna. There was a little store and a daily market, where we would walk\u00a0to get food for dinner every night. The church was a 45-minute walk each\u00a0way. There was an oil company about an hour up a ridiculously bumpy\u00a0road. The people were also exceptionally friendly and we became close\u00a0friends with the nurses really fast. We hung out with them in the\u00a0afternoons, had video nights, and cooked dinner with them a few times.\u00a0The friendships I made while I was in PNG really will stick with me forever.<\/p>\n
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From a medical standpoint, I really learned a lot in my weeks at Kikori.\u00a0We saw patients with all the infectious diseases, complications and poor\u00a0outcomes that we are able to prevent here in the United States. We saw\u00a0tuberculosis manifest not only with pulmonary symptoms (the worst was a\u00a0woman who brought in a \/bucket\/ of frank blood she coughed up), but also\u00a0in the hips, spine, and pelvis. There was a boy on the ward whom the\u00a0nurses called their \u201cmiracle boy\u201d and had recently woken up from a\u00a0three-week coma because of TB meningitis. Many patients had\u00a0complications of leprosy, leading to horribly infected ulcers and\u00a0wounds. One two-year-old boy had an infected tropical ulcer that had\u00a0destroyed the bottom half of his leg. Another five-year-old came in with\u00a0malaria and a hemoglobin level of what we estimated to be 3 or 4\u00a0(dangerously anemic) but we didn\u2019t have the equipment to do a blood\u00a0transfusion.<\/p>\n
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We set many fractures and sewed up a woman\u2019s finger that had been bitten\u00a0off down to the nail bed in a fight. There were many women who came in\u00a0with injuries that had been inflicted by their husbands. One in\u00a0particular had been hit in the chest with a club and was in a complete\u00a0panic when we got to the ward to see her. When we were examining her she\u00a0suddenly stopped breathing. I was just a little concerned (!) but Dr.\u00a0Ovoi gave her a deep sternal rub and she woke up. Apparently this was\u00a0the result of hysteria and it\u2019s really common in PNG.<\/p>\n
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I witnessed a tremendous amount of healing take place in an amazingly\u00a0short time. On my second day, a 13-year boy came in with what was\u00a0supposedly a two-week-old stingray injury\u2014the tail had entered one side\u00a0of his calf and come out the other. His leg was infected so badly you\u00a0could smell it walking into the ward and we knew something had to be\u00a0done immediately or the boy would lose his leg. Drs. Ovoi and Manar and\u00a0myself took him to the operating room, where we proceeded to play the\u00a0part of surgeon, anesthesiologist, and nurse simultaneously. Ovoid opened\u00a0up a little bit of the leg attempting to drain what we thought would be\u00a0a collection of pus. The only thing that came out was calf muscle, red\u00a0and swollen. Ovoi then handed the knife to me and told me to see what I\u00a0could do. I\u2019m obviously not a trained surgeon but knew that we had to be\u00a0fairly aggressive in cleaning up the leg or the boy would either die or\u00a0have to have an amputation. It was an almost surreal experience\u2014I had\u00a0the scalpel and the charge to do whatever I thought needed to be done\u00a0(which was ?)\u2014but in that setting I felt pretty powerless. So what did I\u00a0do? Prayed\u2014that God would give me the wisdom and the skill in my hands\u00a0to do what needed to be done, and that He would help to heal this young\u00a0boy with such a long life ahead of him.<\/p>\n
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I ended up removing a lot of dead tissue and opening up the leg a little\u00a0bit to take pressure off of the muscle and blood vessels in the leg. At\u00a0one point I had fingers from each hand touching each other inside the\u00a0boy\u2019s leg (sorry guys\u2026 you know I like this stuff). We washed out the\u00a0wound as best we could, packed it and bandaged the boy up. The next day\u00a0he looked worse and was writhing around in pain with a high fever, so we\u00a0took him back to the operating room and cleaned some more dead tissue\u00a0from the leg. We couldn\u2019t keep an IV line in the boy, so he couldn\u2019t get\u00a0the antibiotics and fluids he needed. It was an awful situation, and I\u00a0spent most of that next night awake trying to figure out what else we\u00a0could do for him. I was at a loss.<\/p>\n
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The next day I decided that I literally couldn\u2019t and shouldn\u2019t do\u00a0anything else for him. Apparently the father had become \u201caggressive\u201d the\u00a0previous night when the nurses were trying to put yet another IV line in\u00a0him, and was walking around the ward with a 3-foot machete, threatening\u00a0to kill whoever came near his son. I would have been slightly amused at\u00a0this, except for the fact that word around the hospital was that this\u00a0man had killed his first two wives and was likely responsible for the\u00a0boy\u2019s injury (it was thought to be a spear and not a stingray). Where\u00a0was hospital security when we needed them? I really felt helpless at\u00a0that point.<\/p>\n
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The nurses continued to do dressing changes but we weren\u2019t any more\u00a0aggressive with treatment. All I could do was pray for the boy. He\u00a0seemed to be slowly getting better and stopped having fevers, but I\u00a0didn\u2019t want to get my hopes up. One day, about a week later, I was\u00a0walking through the ward and saw him on the veranda in a wheelchair. I\u00a0said hey to him and he smiled the biggest smile I had ever seen. It just\u00a0melted my heart. He looked great on the day I left and I hope that he\u00a0continues to get better. That boy was living proof of the power of\u00a0prayer\u2026it took over when we reached our limits as humans and physicians.<\/p>\n
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At Kikori, I was blessed to see a lot of life begin on the obstetrics\u00a0ward. I also sadly was witness to the last breath taken by one little\u00a0baby. A woman brought her four-month old adopted nephew\u2014little Mick\u2013to\u00a0the hospital. He had been suffering from some stomach illness for a week\u00a0and was very dehydrated. On top of that, he had severe protein\u00a0malnutrition from not being breastfed. We had an IV line in him for a\u00a0few days and were attempting to rehydrate him. The IV stopped working a\u00a0few days later but Mick wasn\u2019t looking any better. We were called one\u00a0afternoon because he was having trouble breathing. When we got to the\u00a0ward, it was apparent that he was again very dehydrated and a really\u00a0sick little baby. We tried for 45 minutes to get an IV line in him and\u00a0his difficulty breathing just kept getting worse. Suddenly his little\u00a0chest was still and his life of pain ended. I cried with his aunt that\u00a0day, even though I knew we had done all that we could for little Mick.<\/p>\n
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I think that\u2019s all I have in me to write right now. My time in PNG was\u00a0unquestionably life-changing. It was also incredibly humbling. Human\u00a0life is such a gift\u2026and I was able to witness the miracles of life,\u00a0death, healing, human love and courage at their purest, without being\u00a0confounded by the technology and frills of the society in which we live.\u00a0I would love to be able to go back one day (if I survive residency\u00a0training). I couldn\u2019t have done it without all of the support and love\u00a0you all have shown me and I thank you so much for that. God Bless!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just wanted to give you guys one last way-overdue update on the last\u00a0two weeks I spent in Papua […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/kellyhankins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}