Sunday, July 7th

It was an awesome day of rest, worship and fellowship.   

Exotic flowers like this grow everywhere!

At 9:30 am, I visited the CTICU; all of the patients were extubated and continuing to make good progress.  Susan was the second patient we operated on; she required high doses of cardiac drugs for several days.  It was so good to see her in a chair and extubated!

Susan extubated and eager to start walking!

The Sunday morning CTICU Nurses

Winfrida

At 9:45, we departed for the African Gospel Mission Church, which is about 2 miles from Tenwek over washed-out dirt “roads."  We were invited to the service and to lunch by Pastor Daniel Hgetich. Daniel is well know to us; he is a surgical technician who scrubs on heart cases.  We attended a wonderful service with about 150 people attending that rural church.  Those that could not give a monetary offering brought corn, sugar cane, avocados, and other produce that was auctioned off at the end of the service.

Children singing during the service:
Make a joyful noise!

Fellowship after the service

After church, we were invited to Daniel and Ann’s home for lunch.  Daniel has a cow, two calves, six goats, several sheep, and 6 chickens.  He grows bananas, avacodo, tea seedlings, and feed for the cow and calves.

Malik's son Nathan holding the Party Crasher!

We had a surprise visit from one of Daniel’s baby goats during dinner.  It was a wonderful time of fellowship.

We also met Rebecca Chumo, a retired OB nurse from Tenwek.  She trained at Tenwek and worked in OB from 1959 to 1996.  On my last trip here in October of 2012, she had a pacemaker implanted at Tenwek. An amazing, spunky woman in her mid 70’s with 7 children, 26 grandchildren and 12 great grand children so far.  Rebecca donated the land for construction of the church.

Malik with our friend Daniel

 Tomorrow we are going to step up the pace and begin doing two cases a day; so this evening I went to the OR to set up for the first case of the day. 

  

Tubing pack donated by Sorin

One of the challenges of this work is obtaining supplies to do the cases.  Over the past year, I have received donated supplies from many sources for the program here.  Shown in the photo above is a tubing pack donated by The Sorin Group.  In February, we shipped 900 pounds of supplies (three 4x4x6 ft pallets by air freight).  The supplies were donated from various sources.  Many thanks to Pete Martelle, Reed Quinn, and Bob Kramer, who gave generous donations to cover the shipping costs. Pete also contributed with packing and shrink wrap expertise.    

Giovanni Cecere donated ACT cartridges, tubing packs and cell saver sets.  He lent me the ACT II machine to use on this trip.  I promise to bring it back in one piece, Gio! It may even still work.  JK.   It was vital to the mission!  Thank you!

Please check out my post tomorrow.  I will tell you how Holly and I managed to get 200 lbs of supplies in our luggage and still have room for 3 pairs of undies and 3 paris of socks each! 

The need here is great and tomorrow I will share how you can be part of supporting the cardiac program at Tenwek.   

Until tomorrow,

Bob