Surgery Backlog

There used to be a huge fistula surgery backlog, but that was before Dr. Christina came. Dr. Christina is a Dutch woman who's been working in Africa for 25 years and has been doing fistula surgeries almost exclusively since 2002. She is based in Kampala, Uganda, but travels in a circuit to different hospitals doing surgeries wherever they need her. She's been at HEAL for at least 3 weeks, maybe more (time kind of has a tendency to jumble together considering I don't even know what the date is without looking) and has been getting rid of our backlog.

She does 4 surgeries a day and she does the cases that have failed before, sometimes again and again. Some of the women she's treated have been at HEAL for over two years and have had 4 or 5 surgeries. One woman told one of the girls yesterday that she just had her 8th surgery. Some of these surgeries have been done at HEAL and others at other institutions, and all of varying quality. Some fistulas take a couple surgeries to fix, but there is a lot of makeshift surgery going on as well. Supposedly now all of the women at HEAL have either been operated on or are healing as I type. She's been doing 4 a day, and another surgeon here has been doing 2 a day along with other surgeries and then Dr. Christina checks if it is a hard operation or he isn't sure of something. So they've been doing 6 a day for at least 3 weeks, so that's a lot of women.

HEAL is blessed with Dr. Christina not only in the operating room, but at Maji as well. She's a bit quiet at first, but she opened up after a couple weeks, and since Lyn's been back there have been meals where she's been the center of attention. She has 25 years of experience to tap into and a sense of humor that sets us all laughing for minutes at a time. It's great to be working here when she is here and she'll be leaving soon, but should be coming back before I leave, and possibly might be here twice yet, so I'm looking forward to that.