TONY: School’s Out

Happy Summer! Here at Emory Med, we get a well-deserved three week break for the summer. I know what you’re thinking: “Three weeks? That sounds magical!” Yes, it is indeed magical. Today, for example, I’ve been operating under a strictly magical schedule:
Noon: Wake up sans alarm.
12:30 pm: Eat a big sandwich.
1:00 pm: Watch Monsters Inc.
3:00 pm to Present: Lay on the couch/remain awesome.

Ample rest is well-deserved, especially given the fact that I’ve just returned from a week-long service trip to Haiti. Eight students (5 first years, 3 second years), an ICU nurse, 2 nurse anesthetists, 2 OR nurses, 2 ER docs, and 2 surgeons came together to form the core of Emory Medishare’s first-ever surgery trip to the city of Hinche in Haiti’s Central Plateau.

The trip was amazing. Over the course of four days at the hospital, our team performed 15 surgeries, the majority of which were much-needed prostatectomies. As medical students, our level of responsibility was elevated to that of surgical residents: we evaluated patients for surgery, scrubbed in on every procedure, and learned the intricacies of post-operative patient care. As a result, my clinical skill set is currently out of control. Honestly, I could probably sneak up behind you and perform a prostate exam without you even knowing it.

What truly made this a transformative experience, however, was the nature of the impact that our team was making. We stepped into the main room of the hospital on the first day and examined every single admitted patient: there were no written medical records, an occasional chest x-ray, insects and bowls of urine abound. Every man in the room was sporting a month-old catheter (not a good situation). The universal chief complaint was “trouble with urination”. With the aid of translators, we examined every patient and determined whether or not their problem could be remedied by surgery. Some patients were turned away because of advanced stage prostate cancer that was beyond the point of surgical repair. Still others were turned away because of blood pressure levels that were too high and uncontrolled. Add on to that the fact that some patients who were fit for surgery were ultimately denied an operation because, in our haste to perform as many procedures as possible, we nearly neglected to realize that we were overloading the hospital’s capacity to care adequately for post-op patients—if we did not have the means to get the patients through recovery, we had to decrease the number of surgeries. In the end, we were only able to operate on a relative handful of the total number of patients who stormed the hospital at the news of our arrival.

How then do we measure the amplitude of our impact? On the one hand, we were able to change the lives of the few ‘lottery winners’. For example, we were able to remove an enormous scrotal mass from a man who suffered from elephantiasis. Can you imagine the possibilities that you would suddenly be able to see in life after waking up to find that the 30-pound scrotum that you’d been lugging around for ten years was finally gone? Exactly.

On the other hand, there is the question that has eaten away at every one of us since our return: What about everyone else? What about all of the patients that we had to turn away? What about the imperfect system into which we dipped for a few days, only to leave it marginally better? I guess the only way for me to count our endeavor as a success is to know that we plan to return, with the ultimate goal of making the facility as good as we believe it can be.

And once again, Chin-Quee keeps it too real, and rambles on for far too long. Just know that, should you choose to attend Emory Med, the opportunity to have experiences like this will be at your fingertips, and you won’t mind donating a bit of your summer vacation to some people who will be forever grateful for the work that you did.