Friday & Saturday update

We wanted to let you know about the long surgery yesterday on the 3 year old girl who had the oesophagus operation.

In actual fact the surgery itself progressed extremely well and Neil was fairly happy with the technical aspects of it, having not performed this type of surgery on an infant before.  Unfortunately about 2 1/2 hours into the operation the child had a major cardiac arrest but was able to be resuscitated.  She had 4 further arrests as the surgery continued & was quickly able to be resuscitated but each episode delayed the procedure further.  The surgery was however completed in about 5 1/2 hours but while Neil was writing up the notes and before the anaesthetic had been completed, the child arrested again.  This time, despite working on her for at least 45 mins and involving other members of the team for advice and an independent perspective, she was unable to be resuscitated.  This was pretty devastating for all concerned, particularly Neil and Anthony.  One of the hospital chaplains who was then going to be involved in informing the family, came and prayed for Neil and Anthony.  We heard today that the family, although naturally upset, are accepting of what has happened because at least someone had tried to help their daughter.  That is the bad news.

The good news is that today we had a very successful training session with the doctors and nurses on Early Management of Severe Trauma.  There was good participation by the hospital doctors in a new form of teaching we have not used before, running scenarios where they had to be involved in resuscitating patients.  After a strong sense from God that we should be running this course today, it was a great encouragement that this went so well, particularly after yesterday's disappointment.