Day 4 - To change just one life

Vien Doan, July 14, 2011

Another eventful day has ended. There are so many stories to tell, following is just one side from the perspective of one team, Team B.

Team B with 4 doctors saw 213 patients today at a health center 14 km from the center of Hue. In years past when we came here, the nearer we were to the city center, the "less" sick patient we saw.  That's not true this time.

This 38 year old woman came to us complaining of not being able to eat solid food for 20 days. She is able to drink liquid but any solid and she would vomit it up, choking on it. We sent her to get "scoped" and the gastroenterologist was not able to pass this scope through the esophagus. It appears that there is a cancerous process going on. Our policies won't allow us to treat cancer as our resources are limited but in this case, we must find it and at least find a way to get some nutrition to her. As we talked with her she kept saying "I am so hungry."

This young child was a congenital heart defect where she only has one Ventricle.  She was offered surgeries years ago but family is unable to afford it. Now she is blue as can be and her fingers are all "clubbed" due to the lack of oxygen.  We need to move quickly on her.  Last week, a young child died waiting for our arrival. We've got to get this one cared for.  We pulled some strings and got her seen by the cardiac surgeon at Hue Central Hospital. Please pray that she can be operatead on successfully next week. We thank the Little Red Scarf for partnering with us on these children.

This 48 year old man came into our clinic riding on the back of bike.  He was not able to stand. He fell 3 days ago and was not able to get the care. He knew our team was coming so he waited. An x-ray revealed he is a complete fracture of the femoral neck. The only treatment is replacing that hip.  We knew it would be expensive but didn't know how much it would cost so we called and the message relayed to us was $200. We thought "Wow, this is great, we can help him". So we sent him to the University for surgery. When he was seen, we were informed it would be $2,000. We had misunderstood the original conversation.

From the field no one could make the decision to give him this surgery. We can't pay for surgeries on adult costing this much, only for children with congenital heart defects. I presented it to the entire team for their decision. We either:

1. Send him home knowing he will not be able to care for his family any more.
2. Cut our surgery budget next week by 10 patients and allow him to have the surgery.

The entire team was very adamant that these 2 options are not options at all. This one life must be changed and unanamously voted to donate their own personal money to make this happened. Thank you team!

On the surgical side of our team, Dr. Hordynski operated on 11 patients so far with a lot of interests from our local surgeons.

On a lighter note, after dinner tonight, our team spent a lot of time sharing our thoughts and feelings. What a wonderful time this short meeting had been. Our own lives are changed and not just our patients. Members are doing things they never thought they would or could do. Praise God.

Friday both Team A and B will leave at 6AM. Our travel today would be 2 hours. Team C (surgery) will leave at 7AM. Below is Team B after a long work day seeing 217 patients, 37 dental sugeries, 110 pairs of glasses and thousands of prescriptions.