Caution! Surgery pictures. AV Fistula.

Let me tell you a story about Esther. She is about 25 years old. Came to our hospital in September after a stab wound. She was trying to stop her sister from being chopped and got in the way of the bush knife. The picture above is her arm, just below her elbow, where she was stabbed. She lost a lot of blood. Scott happened to be in the ER when she came in. The staff worked hard to just keep her alive and sew her up and stop the bleeding. If I understood the history correctly, they even had to do CPR.

She lived and went home. But developed a lump in her arm and numbness down her hand. Coming back to the hospital, the doctors found that the lump was blood pooling and not fully supplying her arm with blood. The fistula pictured above is where the blood was collecting and you can see the hole. Dr Kevin took out the defect and got a vein from her leg to put in Ester's arm.

Here is the leg.

Here is the vein before putting it Ester's arm. I didn't get a finished picture. But it was so amazing after Dr Kevin sewed both ends of the vein to the area where fistula was, and it filled up with blood and started pumping! Wow! This is not a typical surgery we do at Kudjip and I had never seen it done before. But Ester's injury, left untreated, would have kept getting worse and she would have lost her arm and eventually died. While at the hospital, she realized the miracle of her even being alive and made a decision to follow Christ. I am praising God for letting me be a small part of the miracle in Ester's life.