Update from the Chop Shop

Some notable excerpts from the surgical schedule for this week (Chop Shop = the operating rooms, according to one dry-humored nurse from New Zealand). Don’t read while eating, and don’t try this at home:

Naval hernia repair – 17 year old male. There are a ton of kids running around with belly buttons that protrude out almost like a banana, some as big as 3 or 4 inches. It’s a result of weakness in the abdominal wall where the umbilical cord used to be so that the intestines kind of hang out, and it usually disappears in children by around 3 years old (from what I can gather online), but it may require surgical repair if it doesn’t fix itself naturally (I’ve been told that it’s exacerbated by incorrect cutting of the umbilical cord, hence the high incidence of it around here, but I haven’t been able to confirm that). Of course, surgical repair is rare in West Africa, so there are a whole lot of belly buttons around that give new meaning to the term ‘outty’, and Mercy Ships takes some of the worst cases to fix.

Removal of bullet from leg – 41 year old male. Pretty self-explanatory. Gun shoots bullet, bullet hits leg and stays there…

Creation of anus – 1.5 week-old infant. Yeah, ouch. Apparently some babies are born without an anus, a condition called imperforate anus, and if they’re lucky, there’s a pediatric surgeon around who can make one for them. If they’re not lucky, they can live for a little while but not too long, and they have other problems during their short lives that I won’t get into. This tiny baby was certainly lucky, as an American pediatric surgeon was in the country at the time, and we happened to have a child anaesthesiologist on board to make the operation possible. Oh, and the baby’s name: Surprise!

Release of ankylosis on right mandible with temporalis muscle flap – 24 year old women. This woman had a disease called Noma when she was 4 year old, which when it goes untreated basically eats at your body, usually your face. The right side of her face was kind of caved in, and her jaw was fused shut by the Noma; she’s been eating through a hole created by several knocked out teeth. The surgeons removed part of the mangled jaw and then used a muscle flap from the top of her head and a piece of bone from the side of her eye to recreate her right cheek, filling out her face and allowing her to move her jaw again – for the first time in 20 years!

Note: I’m trying to describe these conditions as accurately as possible, but strangely enough there’s very little information about, for example, how long a baby with imperforate anus can live without surgery – these sorts of things going unattended in a first-world country is so absurd that the survival rate without treatment isn’t even an issue worth mentioning…