My christmas gift

1: The result and my Pepsi treat!
2: Baby Cristiani and Mama Bertha

23rd of December I scrubbed in on a surgery with doctor Zakaria. It was supposed to be a psoas abscess. Usually he lets me be the surgeon and he is the assistant, but luckily this time he opened up and did most of the work. When we opened up we found some old blood, so we figured it might be a hematoma in stead on an abscess. Suddenly it started to bleed a lot and Zakaria pulled out a lot of debries from inside the woman. Then she started to bleed even more. I have never seen so much blood in my life. I looked at the things he pulled out and it looked a lot like vessel wall… So… aneurysm, not an abscess! The bleeding continued and the woman went into shock very fast. And I understood where this was going. I started feeling very bad, felt really pale, started to feel cold and sweat, my vision got blurry… so I sat down for a while, and then 2 other experienced surgeons came to try to repair the aneurysm. The woman died, she was only 38 years old… Would not have happened at home.

In the other operating theatre another woman was also bleeding out. She just had a cesarian and she went in shock before the baby got out. So the baby was not doing very well and just accidentally I passed by after the baby was out of the uterus. He had an OK color, but was completely floppy and didn’t cry. And the nurses didn’t do anything about it. So I started stimulating him and we did the suction aspiration. And after some time he got better and in the end he cried a little as well.

The mother was sutured up and sendt to ICU. At the ICU the bled very heavily from her vagina and the nurses there sent her back to the operating theatre. She went into shock and she was intubated, and she kept on bleeding. In the end they decided to take out the uterus. A little bit too late I thought… nobody thought she would survive. Her bloodpressure was so low it was not possible to measure it and she started gasping for air like people do just before they die. So I just left, I didn’t want to see another young mother die on the table that die. There was no doubt in my mind that she would die.

Later in the evening I heard that she had been transferred to ICU again, and she was barely alive. They didn’t think she would make it unless she got some more blood transfused. She already got 1,5 liters from her relatives. Here in Tanzania there is no blood bank, the relatives have to provide the blood. So everything was used, no more blood left. And she would probably not make it without another half a liter of blood. So I checked her bloodtype and I was pretty sure we had the same; A +. At 8pm I went to the laboratory and told them I wanted to give blood to this woman. They said; No problem, hamna shida! I waited, they tested my blood, A +, HIV negative. Then they said I should come back in the morning since they didn’t have all the necessary equipment. I begged and asked if there was no way I could give blod today. Then another woman came and asked if I could buy then sodas. So I asked if I could give blood if I bought them sodas. No no, this is not how it works, they said. But I still bought them sodas and after that it was no problem and I could give a bottle of blood. When I was done I took the blood to the ICU but there they said it was not necessary, her haemoglobin was 8,0. I really wanted her to have the blood as soon as possible since it was so fresh. So I stopped by the doctor that operated her and she also wanted her to have the blood now since the platelets and coagulation factors were still good to go and that’s what she needed. So she got my blood. The next morning when I came, she was extubated, she produces urin, she could talk a little bit. My Christmas miracle! Really amazing! And now they have named the little baby boy after me: Cristiani! Today I have him some baby clothes and I have decided that I want to support him with some money every month so he can have a good education.
So my only Christmas present this year was a bottle of blood! But it was the best ever! 4 children still have a mother and her husband still has a wife.

Straight after I gave blood Dr. Zakaria called me asking if I wanted to assist on a Cesarian. So I went there. Pale as a dead body, but of course the blacks think I am pale no matter what so they didnt notice. I pulled through but it was really good to go to bed that night.