Uganda Spine Surgery Blog- Day 12 (Last Day)

By Erin Sadler
August 7, 2012

Today, our last day in Uganda, was spent operating on a 5 year old male with congenital scoliosis at Case Hospital. While half of the team was at Case operating, the other half of the team went to Mulago to wrap up any loose ends, check in on post-operative patients, and clean up our equipment. Once we had finished up at Mulago, we bid a bittersweet farewell to this place that had quickly become a home away from home for several of us. Although we had only been there for two weeks it became very apparent to us that we had established very strong and special relationships with the health care staff we had been working alongside; not to mention the relationships we had formed with the patients we had operated on and were now on their way to recovery. To me there was definitely a sentiment of this trip not being long enough. It seemed like just when we were starting to get into the swing of things, and starting to really mesh with the Mulago staff, it was time to go. Afterall, there is always more we could do.
Once we had finished up at Mulago, those of us who were not part of the operating team at Case went home to work on outstanding reports, sorting of the thousands of pictures that will be necessary to supplement the trip report, and catching up on other odds and ends. However, our ability to do work was interrupted by a building-wide power outage. Thankfully a generator was brought in, but only lasted as long as a full tank of gas, and then we were once again powerless. This made for more of relaxing afternoon that we had anticipated, but we were not that upset about that!
The operating team finished up the case successfully and without any complications. Upon their arrival home, we all packed up, sorted out the equipment that would be getting shipped back to the United States, and cleaned up the apartments, as we had an early morning departure on Friday morning. After all of our dirty work was completed, we gathered for our final team dinner at a restaurant called The Lawn. It was a lovely evening, with great food, drink, company and lasting stories and memories shared amongst us all. As usual we shared our personal lessons, but this time it was lesson of the trip. Although we all shared very profound and meaningful lessons, it became obvious to me that this trip could never be summed up in a single lesson. Each of us has learned invaluable lessons from our patients, colleagues, from the Ugandan way of life as a whole; and more importantly learned more about ourselves than we probably even know. It is my hope that these lessons and memories remain strong and fresh in my mind for years to come.

Read more of Erin’s blog and view her beautiful photographs here.

Posted by Robyn |