A Few Favorites

Yesterday was my last day at the hospital, so today I'm posting some favorite moments from my time there. =)

Saying goodbye to Parzheen! After playing with bubbles, of course. =)

Mabast holding my hand and wearing his penguin mask. 

Yosef laughing yesterday!

One of the many new concepts we taught the local staff. Progress!

Vinoos

Getting Jafar to smile!

Yasna's smile! 

The "magic wall" -  a rolling door they make everyone line up behind every time we take a portable x-ray in the unit. I'm going to miss the magic wall! Fun times. 

The PICU Paparazzi

Bubbles! A big hit with all the kids, even though I only have a photo of them with Halbast.

Speaking of Halbast! He was a huge favorite! We spent a lot of quality bonding time together.

One last video...

The Bazaar

Today (Friday), Ann and I took a break from PICU and went to the Bazaar, which is a market within walking distance of the hospital. A picture says a thousand words!

Street view

Baklava

Lots and lots of little stands selling everything from fruit to toilet paper. 

Strawberries and Pomegranete!

This is Kurdish chewing gum - straight from the tree. Yep, that's pretty much what it tastes like too. 

Cloth for making traditional Kurdish women's dress - TONS of color!

This area reminded me of Pike Place Market. Except we didn't see any squeaky cheese for sale!

Flesh popsicle anyone?

Watermelon!

One more street view...

One Bed Fits All

This is baby Leya. The PICU beds are all adult sized beds covered in plastic sheeting. You can imagine how difficult it is to position our kids on a slippery sheet on an adult sized bed! We are extremely short on sheets, and we have almost no pillows or blankets. Night shift found huge rolls of gauze bandaging to use as pillows! So here is Leya, in her most comfortable breathing position - sitting up!

Awake now! She wins today's award for "best hair". =)

Such a happy baby! Shortly after this, she got the rest of her lines out and she is now eating and doing great!

Just to give you a better idea of what it looks like to have only adult sized beds for our patients. There really is a tiny baby in this bed! 

Sweet Success!

Meet Heny, the latest PICU favorite. This sweet baby only has to make a tiny whimper before she is immediately picked up and held. As you can see, she is clearly too adorable to lay in bed and cry, so we must all share the burden of cuddling her every time she makes a squeak.

My turn again?! Oh ok, fine. =) 

Didan has stayed extubated for two days now, and he is doing much, much better! He still has bilateral chest tubes and is very weak, but he has made a lot of progress! Please continue to pray for him to completely recover.  

Yosef smiled today! I have been worried about him because his mother said he was not the same after surgery. He didn't babble the way he did before surgery, and there was concern about his vision and hearing. But after a few days, he gradually started to respond!  When I visited him on Wednesday - he smiled!

 Mabast is off the ventilator and doing well! Before surgery, his sats were in the 30's. His parents actually painted his toenails and fingernails pink to give him some color! Here he is a few hours after extubation, already holding his own bottle. 

 

Parzheen went home!

The Longest Day

Warning: this post contains emotional content.

Wednesday morning, after a break-neck start, a busy set of rounds, and some CPR (successful, praise God), I looked at the clock and saw it was only 11am. I felt like I'd already worked at least 10 hours! One of the doctors said to me, "It's like war, isn't it? Constant war."

Yesterday (Thursday) was a hard day. In the morning all the ventilators were in use, and they had already started the next case in OR. One of the ventilated kids was stable and ready to extubate, so we took her off the ventilator first thing on our shift. At a dark shade of blue, she was pinker than she had ever been. Within two hours, she completely decompensated, and despite everyone's efforts and 30 minutes of compressions, we lost her. It was one of the most difficult and draining experiences of my life. I cannot even completely describe to you how terrible and surreal that moment felt. We lost one child last week, but I was not involved in the case at all. It was painful to walk into the hospital that morning, past the mourning father in the waiting room, and hear the heart wrenching screams of the mother crying for her son. But for me it was far more difficult to do compressions on this little baby, and feel her lifeless chest under my hands, knowing we were not going to get her back. It was so hard to see the struggling local staff, who just watched their first child patient die. It hurt to think about the family. My eyes teared at the defeated look on the surgeon's face when he heard there was nothing more we could do. And we could not stop for even a moment to comprehend our loss. The other five patients in the PICU got nearly no care while our entire team worked on this baby. Afterward, we immediately had to go back to caring for them, and also prepare for the surgical admit coming, while the local staff recovered. It was very difficult for me to focus on what I needed to do next. The PICU is just one large room, so while I continued working on the other kids, I could see them wrapping the baby girl's body.
But throughout this entire trip, at times I have felt an extra measure of peace that I know comes straight from God. He gently reminds me that I am not in control, and that he loves these children even more than I do. None of the work that I do is as important as showing God's love to everyone I come in contact with. That little baby girl is waiting for us in a better place. Please keep our team, the local staff, the children, and the families in your prayers, especially the two families who lost a child.

Hebrews 10:23
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

 

Extreme Makeover - Vinoos edition!

Vinoos got extubated last night and she passed with flying colors! When we arrived on shift this morning, she was sleeping peacefully and breathing easy. It was the most relaxed she has been in days and everyone was glad to see her so happy. For the past two days, she has been rolling around in bed, and this is what she's done to her hair......

I'd like to say we made short work of fixing it, but it actually took some serious time! I spent about 30 minutes gently combing it, and then we finally got some spray-in conditioner to use as detangler. After wetting, conditioning, and more combing we finally got this:

Today she surprised all of us with her mellow personality. She has been so wild the last few days - never laying still, that we were all shocked to see her so content all day long. Her mom brought her some clothes and one of the volunteers bought us some hair ties. Here she is all dressed up with her hair done:

We had kind of a slow afternoon in PICU so I went downstairs for a little while and we played with bubbles and toys. Halbast is such a ham with the camera! He cries as soon as he sees me, because he doesn't like his chest physiotherapy. But when he sees the camera, the crying turns off and the charm turns on! Of course, he loved the bubbles too. =)

Yasna went home today!

Ayad goes home tomorrow!

Just over those mountains....

Yesterday I had the day off, so I went with a local friend of a friend and toured a little bit of the city. We drove to the top of a large hill that overlooked the city. Behind us were mountains in Iran! It was really cool to see Sulumaniyah from that height, because it was easier to see the "ring road" that circles the city. We drive this road every day on our way to and from the hospital. There is a concrete/landscaping median down the center, so you have to wait until there is a break in the barrier, and then do a U-turn and back track in the opposite direction to get to the street you would like to turn on. Very interesting. The driving is a little crazy, but nothing like Kenya! There are no marked lanes, and the weaving back and forth across the road is the favored driving style. There are random speed bumps spaced along the road, and it seems that between them you can go as fast as your vehicle will take you until you reach the next speed bump. All this makes for twisty, winding, brake slamming sort of driving that makes sitting in the back of the bus way more fun than the front....


We ate out at a Kursdish Italian Restaurant, which I shouldn't even be telling you about because I have NO pictures! Apparently I carry my camera with me everywhere for no reason at all. The food was good. I ate so much tortellini alfredo that I wasn't hungry until the next morning. There certainly is no cheese shortage in Kurdistan.

My camera couldn't capture the entire city in one shot. It really is a lot larger than I imagined! The weather was cool and sunny and fairly clear. It was a nice drive!
The land looks arid and mostly bare, but apparently it was all forested before Saddam Hussein logged the area for lumber to build his 80 palaces. The land was further demolished by Hussein's genocide attack on the Kurds, and subsequent dust storms have removed a lot of top soil. But, they are slowly starting to replant trees here and re-forest.

One of the days we were driving to the hospital, Dr. Novick pointed to the mountains and said "Just over those mountains is your favorite country in the whole world - Iran." Well, once we reached the top of the hill to look out at Suli, my friend said to me, "and right behind you  is Iran!" We drove around the other side of the hill so I could get these photos. =) (Yep, dad, I knew you would be so proud.)

Today at the hospital we only did one surgery. The case went very long but our little patient did well and extubated within a few hours of being admitted to PICU. Two of our patients are continuing to be somewhat difficult to manage. Little Vinoos is much improved and I almost got to extubate her today, except she decided to fall asleep this afternoon and refused to wake up enough to get her tube out! Little stinker will most definitely be extubated on night shift. We have plans to fix her hair tomorrow and put it up in Cindy-Lou-Who pig tails. I'll be sure to get photos! Our other little guy, Didan, has had some complications and is not doing as well as we would like. Please keep him in your prayers. 

Baby Yosef transferred to the pediatric ward, but not before we all held him and posed for pictures! Then I got to visit him in the ward of course, for physiotherapy. He thanked me by coughing once and then falling asleep. =) I took more bubbles to Ayad and the girls - I don't have new pictures of them because I forgot my camera but I will get some tomorrow.






I finally remembered to take pictures of dinner! Actually, I ate all the tomatoes first before I remembered, so I covered the empty space with bread. Dinner is Chicken Tka (which is Tka Chicken, because they read from left to right...) which is a perfectly seasoned grilled chicken kabob, served with a side of red cabbage and onions, grilled tomatoes, and pickled vegetables, on a half slice of flat bread. It's good. I've ordered it every night!

 I ordered hummus, but apparently they have run out (What? Not possible!) so they brought me a plate of hummus substitute that was an interesting assortment of pickled carrots, mixed vegetable sweet salad, yogurt cucumber salad, and olives. Hmmm. Not as good as the hummus, but not bad!

And just for variety, here is a picture of Kristin's cucumber tomato salad and soup rice.