Day 1

Yesterday was the first day. As I said we decided to do 2 cases Monday instead of Tuesday. While they were doing surgery in the OR we had a day or 1/2 day of nursing education for staff. Things went well...we talked about Rheumatic heart disease, valve repairs, basic heart info, respiratory info, some hands on to assess breath sounds and heart sounds and then we did a nursing lecture for their education requirement on how a patient goes from start to home when they get surgery at tenwek. The first case was slow going luckily so we got everything taken care of.
Our patient is Duncan a 62 year old who had coronary artery bypass. He did pretty well in surgery and was off the vent in 2 hrs and on some mess for his blood pressure overnight. He is a very sweet man and great to work with. There was the usual craziness when they first get back of figuring out which monitor can do everything we need and losing battery power on iv pumps but all in all good.
They decided to proceed with the second case evn though it was close to 5 when the first case finished. We went home for the night and came back this morning to find it had been a very bad night. The patient got out of the or at 2am and had trouble in the or but was doing okay. Had a lot of fluid on his lungs which was exPected and some prOblems with his blood pressure. Then around 4 am the oxygen in the hospital shut off. I guess we had over exes the system with the two long cases and used all of it and the back uP. The Parker arrested and oxygen was really the thing he needed most to help with his lung problems. So without that nothing they did could bring him back. So Roger, our sweet nurse patient from the Congo, passed away this morning.
This issue has brought things to a halt this morning all over the hospital and in thee or stopped all over and they have been working on the problem. They finally decided to do one case today and have gotten us back up oxygen tanks for our icu (the one we had last night was quickly emptied when the problem started).
It is a very hard way to lose a patient to something so easy to find at home. It is a hard way to start the week so prayers for our team here and for oxygen supply to be constant. More later.
Oh our patient today is named beauty and should get a mitral valve replaced.