Melissa Halliday’s Blog

Kids in Ghana are just cuter… :)

So for those of you who know me fairly well, I’m not the world’s biggest kid person. It’s not that I don’t like them. I do! A lot of them are cute, I’m sure I’ll absolutely adore my new niece this summer, and I enjoy seeing them play and interact with each other…from a distance. I just find kids a little frustrating in one of two ways. Either a) they’re in my clinic/office/ER crying and screaming with something wrong, and they aren’t able to tell me what’s going on, or b) they’re dropping words and doing things that I didn’t even know existed at the age of 7, much less thought about saying/doing. Well, all that’s changed here in Ghana. One of my favorite things here has been holding the newborn babies, playing with the kids, and laughing with them. Even though with many of them there’s a huge language barrier, just taking their picture and showing them what they look like is a reason to giggle uncontrollably. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that every child is unbelievably cute!

That being said, the only part of medicine that was ruled out more quickly than pediatrics for me was OB/Gyn. I am so thankful for those friends of mine out there who love OB/Gyn and want to deliver babies and do gyne surgeries for the rest of their lives…awesome. It’s just not for me. Some of you know my theory on OB/Gyn. Anyway, since here in Saboba, there is only 1 doctor that translates into being on call 24/7/365. That’s a lot! Well, I had finally fallen asleep and was happily off in Melissaland when I heard my name being called at about 2am on Tuesday morning. It was Dr. Jean. “We’ve got c-section and it’s twins.” Uh-oh. I am DEAD tired. It was an incredibly long day on Monday, but such is life. I stumble out of bed, knocking several things over just to find my contacts, throw on some scrubs and we’re out the door. The problem with OB here is that many of these women labor for so long in the villages given all sorts of herbal/plant concoctions that you have no idea what state they’re going to come in. Also, communication here is not the best, so you’re often not given a history before you get to the hospital as to what’s going on and why you’re being called in.

We got to the hospital and Dr. Jean went to go prep the theater and Clint and I headed over to the maternity section of the women’s ward. The midwife was there and showed us that the woman had had an ultrasound at the end of February showing one of the babies was in vertex position (head down) and the other was breech. This meant that she had to have a c-section. She is brought over to the OR and Clint and Dr. Jean scrub in and start the case. I waited with the midwife to receive the babies once they were delivered. Twin #1 was brought over first and I started drying her suctioning her nose and mouth and she started letting out big cries….huge sigh of relief. A crying baby is a breathing baby, always a good thing. Twin #2 however, came out floppy, somewhat blue, and not breathing much on her own. The midwife brought her over next to the other twin and was suctioning and stimulating her, but still nothing. I started to get really concerned as the one baby just laid there motionless. I started praying and begging that this baby would make it, but not knowing how long this woman had been in labor and the fact that there was meconium were not good signs. The midwife started ventilating the baby and doing chest compressions for a few minutes and stopped. I was almost sure that twin #2 hadn’t made it. Then, about 30 seconds later, I saw the baby grimace and start weakly crying. It was seriously the best sound I think I’ve heard in my whole life. We took the babies back to the ward as Clint and Dr. Young closed up the mother and we finally got out of the OR around 4am. I checked on the mom and babies the next morning and all are doing well. The babies were moving around and crying and as cute as could be! I was SO SO thankful!

I took pictures of the babies and will post them when I get home in May. I would never have thought that some of my favorite parts of Ghana would be pediatrics, but that is what I’ve been most drawn to here. It just kills me to see so many kids sick with malaria, meningitis, typhoid, and even severely sick with dehydration and other common illnesses. I love seeing when they turn around though and recover quickly!

Well more to post later, but I thought I’d share this awesome story!
Love you and miss you all!
Melissa