Down To The Wire (Or In This Case The Belt)
Hello everyone!!
It was a long Thursday for our team!
Tim, Dr. Kieffer, and Luke spent the morning touring Kijabe Hospital, which is right next door to Cure's hospital.
While they were touring the hospital, Bekah and I got to see a spine surgery! It was a 6 year old boy who had both scoliosis and kyphosis (kyphoscoliosis). He had a previous surgery to correct his spine some of the way, but further correction needed to be done.
The ending was a bit stressful because they had a hard time getting the boy to wake up and breathe on his own. Everything ended up working out fine and he was waking up in the PACU as we were leaving.
In the afternoon Luke, Bekah, Tim, and Dr. Kieffer stayed in the OR to watch more surgeries. Bekah stood in on the end of an elbow surgery. The girl only had a local nerve block and was awake for the surgery. Tim, Luke, and Dr. Kieffer watched a PMR (posterior medial release) which is a clubfoot correcting surgery.
Luke decided he did not want to be a doctor or a nurse from his time in the OR. Currently (it's Friday morning now) Luke, Bekah, and Dr. Kieffer are watching some more complex clubfoot surgeries.
The ROCK team spent time after lunch discussing our concerns over the 3D printer's accuracy. With only one and a half days left, we kicked it into overdrive. We began with printing out a simple cube instead of a prosthesis. The cube did not go well, so we knew something had to be wrong with either the settings we were using or the 3D printer itself.
After testing different settings and not getting too much improvement, we realized that 2 of the 3 belts in the 3D printer were very loose. We worked into the night and were able to successfully print a perfect cube! Now we are printing prosthesis with much higher accuracy and we feel comfortable leaving after fixing this issue.
Now it is Friday and we feel much more comfortable with the 3D printing. The technicians now have everything they need to practice what they've learned and begin fitting patients with sockets!
We began our morning by having a time of prayer and worship. We learned another Kiswahili song this morning and danced around and clapped to it. I think we will all miss this place.
The rest of the day we will be tying up loose ends, meeting with directors, and ending the day with a dinner with the department as they send us off.
We fly out tomorrow (Saturday) at 10:15 pm and arrive back in Dulles at 1:30pm on Sunday. Just in time for Father's Day!!