The Aliens Have Landed

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Jenny picked Dad and I up at 8:30 and they dropped me off at the Public Hospital. I hurried up to the theater, which is the operating suite basically, expecting to find the doctors already in surgery. I got some scrubs on and my little hat and booties and went to the operating room. No doctors. I went back to the lobby area and someone told me the doctors had not arrived. They showed up after 10 minutes, they were visiting our patients, and we sat around until the first patient was ready for surgery. I didn’t help with this one but it was definitely the most interesting. She had a very large abdominal mass that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. I half expected it hatch and some “Independence Day”-looking alien to pop out. After removing the mass, the doctors did a hysterectomy and finished everything up.

The anesthesiologist informed us that he had to leave at noon and there would be nobody else the rest of the day. The two anesthesiologists on duty that day had called in sick and he had only come to help with the one surgery because it was his day off and he had a class to go to. I left and went to Mercy for a couple hours to have lunch with Dad while the doctors tried to work something out. A guy was supposed to show up at 3 p.m. but when I got there a little after 3 he had not arrived. We sat around until 4 p.m. when a nurse informed us that no one was coming. All this time we had four patients waiting to be seen who were fasting and now they had to fast all night for the surgeries the next day. The whole thing was a huge mess and caused a lot of trouble. Here they have this great doctor from the states volunteering his time and money yet nobody is trying to work with us to help these people. There are a handful people trying, but most people in Georgetown just don’t seem to care. It’s a very frustrating situation.

Dad and I decided to try something different for dinner and went to “The New Thriving Restaurant.” No really, that’s the name of the place. It’s a Chinese buffet. The food was pretty good and it was nice to have broccoli again. That and apple juice are the things I’ve missed most so far. We flagged down a taxi to go to the hotel and then played some Family Feud. We were waiting for a call from a lady named Vanda Radzik who lives in Guyana and does some volunteer work around here. We had contacted her earlier looking for someone who could come and do laundry for the patients. Usually a patient’s family will come and take care of them but because all of our patients are from the interior, most don’t have any family Georgetown. She had made some calls during the day and even talked to the Junior Minister of Health about the situation with the anesthesiologist. Dad made various arrangements with her for the next day and we went to bed.

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