Students for International Mission Service (SIMS)

Outlook 2002
the road
........to Gimbie

Nick Walters, MD
Medical director
Gimbie Adventist Hospital, Ethiopia

We had two interesting cases recently. The first case was a pregnant mother who had been in labor for four days. The baby’s head had gotten stuck at the opening of the vagina. This was quite uncomfortable for mom, since the head had been there for a whole day. Sadly, the baby had already died.

We discovered the reason that the baby was stuck was that the head was in the wrong position. In a normal delivery, the baby is facing the floor when the head comes out. In this case, the baby was face up. After much pulling, we finally removed the baby. I breathed a silent prayer when the ordeal was over.

Two days later, another mother came in with her baby in the same abnormal position. When I saw the baby, I thought that this baby was dead as well, but when I touched the lips, the baby actually sucked my fingers! My heart leaped as I realized that we had a chance to save the baby.

The mother realized the difficulty we were in and and pushed as hard as she could. After trying for 20 minutes, she was able to push the baby out. There wasn’t even a cut or tear from the pushing. In another answer to prayer, both mother and baby turned out just fine.

It has been a challenging and busy time for our surgeon, who just finished residency and took general surgery. He had the opportunity to do brain surgery on three patients, all of whom were suffering from trauma from an attack. Also, within 48 hours, he performed eight C-sections, a small intestine blockage surgery, and a tumor removal surgery!

As I was helping a woman deliver, there was an auto accident with nine casualties. The first patient died at the scene. The second one had some deep cuts on his face, including a head injury. There were three second-year medical students from LLU who had not had any clinical experience yet, but I started them sewing up the scalp of a patient when I got called to the delivery room again. There was another woman who had come in with severe vaginal bleeding. She had delivered a baby at home two weeks before and had been bleeding since, but the bleeding had recently increased.

After examining her, I discovered the placenta still half in her cervix. I removed it right away to stop the bleeding and then scraped out the uterus. As I was doing this, the lady in the next bed went into labor, so I had two of the medical students deliver her baby while I worked nearby on the first patient.

The newborn baby did not want to breathe, so I prayed and helped jump-start the little one, then finished up the job I had started on the first patient. I then ran back to the emergency room and continued with the other seven patients from the auto accident. It took from just after lunch until 8:00 in the evening for us to get everyone taken care of.

We have continued to be blessed here. Thank you for your prayers.

[Outlook 2002]

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