Fall mission 2013 day #7 (Thursday)

Started our morning with a little bit of Christmas in the air in Amman. The lobby had transformed overnight into a Christmas theme-very beautiful decorations.

We headed to Al-Khalidi hospital and started with ICU rounds. Our two kids from yesterday, Osama and Aalyia both looked great. Both can likely go out to the floor later today.

Osama:

Daivid continues to look fantastic and amazing us in how stable he has been after surgery, in’shallah (which means thank Allah, or thank God.. whichever you choose). He will have his chest tube removed today and may actually be able to go out to the floor later. He was one of the patient’s we actually were very worried about because of his pulmonary hypertension-but he proved not to be the case, which makes it all the more rewarding that he had surgery.

Daivid:

Ahmad, our Fontan patient ,also looks great today and will also go to the floor.

Lastly, Mah’d’s fever is better today, none since yesterday, and will also transfer to the floor. All 5 of the children should be on the step-down unit by tomorrow.
Mah’d:

Sondos looks great this morning on the floor–she was already dressed and ready to go-anticipating her discharge today.

Sondos, her mother and Dr. Kal:

Abdullah was also ready to go-I changed his dressing and he proudly showed everyone his incision!

Abdullah and his mother also got to be celebrities today. A local TV station stopped by today and interviewed the team about the mission and the collaboration between GOLA,Rotary and the Indy team. Abdullah and his mother were interviewed, as well as Dr. Kal and myself. Abdullah was a star–and answered all the reporters questions. After his lunch-he was discharged from the hospital—smiling then entire time.

The first operation this Morning was on Meron Mazin Shamoon Elyas Yaqob, a 5 month old boy from Iraq. They are originally from Bagdad, but they moved to Irbil. He has tetralogy of Fallot, large VSD (hole in bottom chambers), a very small pulmonary valve. His saturation were 78-79% before the operation.

Manal, Meron and his mother

The surgery involved closing the VSD , and creating a one leaflet pulmonary valve called a monocusp valve, and enlarging his small pulmonary valve. The repair went very well–he had some difficulty with clotting quickly enough so was bleeding from some small areas around the suture areas-so his case took longer than expected.
Because of that , we decided to postpone Rafeef, the 2 yr old VSD , until tomorrow morning for surgery so se could watch Meron closely this afternoon.

Rafeef and her mother waiting:

Meron’s parents obviously were very relieved to see him come out of the operation, especially since it had been a long day.

The team after Meron arrives to ICU:

After several hours watching Meron, his chest tube continued to show that he was bleeding, and despite our best efforts to give him blood, clotting factors and platelets, we decided to take him back to the operating room to try and see if there was something bleeding that needed to be addressed. When Mark opened him up, there was one very small bleeding area from where needle hole of where a stitch would have been that was the only source of bleeding. So that was addressed and he was closed up and went back to the ICU.

The “all male A -team”ICU nurses, Mark and Mike

Meron returned from OR much more stable and less bleeding-so hopefully the rest of the night (what’s left) will go more smoothly…till tomorrow