Wednesday

Just after we got back from feeding Sarah this morning,  the phone rings.  It is a doctor from casualty (ER). They have a 2 year old vomiting blood with a hemoglobin of 4 (for non medical folks that is REALLY low). He has been sick for 3 months, but only vomiting for 3 days. I went to morning devotions and asked for prayer since my Peds endoscopy experience is minimal to say the least.  He was sedated by anesthesia and we used a very small scope. His mouth, esophagus and stomach were full of blood, but after I washed the blood away, everything looked normal. On the way out at the very top of the esophagus, there was a long, brown thing and everyone except me knew it was a LEECH!  Apparently people get oral leeches from drinking bad water and rarely they go further. We took the scope out and prepared to try to pull the leech out. After going back down, the leech detached and fell into the child's mouth and was retrieved by anesthesia. We kept it alive in the GI lab and many people came by to take pictures and video.  Must not be too common since the whole hospital knew about it by this evening. The awesome thing is that the child will be fine (as long as he is more careful drinking from the river).  I do love working at this place.

The rest of the day was routine Tenwek GI with 3 more cancer stents, one of which may be treatable with surgery!  On ICU/medicine call tonight.

Waiting for endoscopy

I have a great video of him swimming in the bowl, may have to wait until we get home though