Surgeries in the Clinic

Yesterday I was able to watch cataract surgeries at Crystal Eye Clinic. It was a very long day, but I loved it! We started in the afternoon, and did not get home until 9pm. They fed us lunch which was very nice. I had red red, which is a favorite of mine. To be honest, that part took the longest. It took them about 2-3 hours to get our lunch ready before we could start haha.

The clinic looked a lot different than I expected, I thought it would look like a doctor's office, but it was just a normal building with some lawn chairs for a lobby. When we got ready to go inside the surgery room, we had to put on different sandals and green.....snuggies along with masks and a hair net. The surgery room had two beds. The surgeon would finish one surgery, and then wheel his chair to the next bed and perform that surgery. It was very efficient. There were about 4 nurses assisting and administering the anesthetic to the other patients preparing for surgery. In total, we had about 7 patients, the surgeon, 4-5 nurses, and two volunteers in the surgery room. It was busy!

This is the new lens we give to the patients during surgery. It is clear and perfect!

The surgeon was a very nice Ghanaian man who let me ask TONS of questions. He helped me understand each part of the process and explained what happened anatomically to the eye during the surgery. I even looked through his microscope at the eyes! To be honest, it was pretty hard to watch a first. I realized pretty quickly I would need to ease myself into it, so I took a quick look and then sat down for a while. After I repeated this, I finally watched a whole surgery. They take about 15-20 minutes. However, after it was finished I felt light headed and my stomach churned, so I allowed the other volunteer to take a turn until I was ready. The second time I went in, I had no problems at all! I was able to watch and ask questions without any trouble. 

In this picture you can see the cataract has been removed; it is sitting on the white cloth (to the right), and the surgeon is putting the new, clear lens into the eye.

This experience was particularly special because the surgeries that day were being performed for people from Elubo, which is one of the outreaches from my overnight trip last week. I got to see the people I was helping last week, come to the clinic and be operated on. There were 3 very sweet young girls that had cataracts that we operated on. I was so sad that they had cataracts at age 9 and 14, but I was happy we could help them. Because they had to travel very very far to get to the clinic, they have to stay overnight and so the clinic put on a movie for them. When we left I saw all the patients with bandaged eyes trying to watch haha. They were so nice, and no one every looked scared coming which surprised me because I would be scared! They are awake for the whole thing! In all, I think we saw about 24 surgeries that day.