Glands and nerve blocks

On Wednesday evenings there is usually a hospital inservice. I've been able to go to two of these, and I'm amazed at the expertise of the surgeons and others on this ship.  Dr Cheng is a head and neck surgeon from London that comes to the ship every year.  Operating on people suffering from enormous goiters and neck tumors, is unlike anything he sees in London.

This week I heard from our long term crew member, Dr Barki.  He's an anesthesiologist from the US and lives onboard with his wife and three children.

He spoke on nerve blocks.  Catchy title?  It was fascinating!  Using nerve blocks is relatively new on the ship.  He uses a portable ultrasound machine to locate the area for the anesthetic, and demonstrated it on himself!

The fascinating part were the patient stories.  Claudine had a large goiter, and he talked about the difficulty in getting an airway with such a large mass.  Here are pictures of Claudine before and after surgery:

Someone in the audience asked about the surgery on Kaltouni, a ten year old girl from rural Cameroon, who had an extremely large neck tumor.  This was the first time that the government actually sent a plane to bring this girl to the ship for surgery.  But when they got there, no one from her family would come with her.  These people had never seen a plane up close before!
She needed a caregiver to come with her, so a neighbor man came.  It was quite a sacrifice, because his family needed him to provide food.  When asked, he replied that this was Kaltouni's only chance.

But it's not only the skill of the operating team, it's God's grace as well.  When they brought Kaltouni here, they weren't sure they would even be able to operate.  If the tumor had invaded her brain, they couldn't operate.  When they did the scan, the tumor went right to the base of her brain.  Such miracles!

Debbie