More miraculous stories from Bongolo Hospital:
Cases, like this one, encourage us to trust God to help us with difficult and complex operations, even though our resources are small. It is a privilege to help these who come to us, and to share with them the love and light of Jesus before it’s too late.
Eight year-old Leticia’s
story is even more amazing. Her mother
brought her to the hospital in early February with a CT scan showing a
tumor filling most of the right lobe of her liver. Dr. Keir
Thelander operated on Leticia with a visiting surgeon and several of our
residents. Near the end of the 4 hour procedure, during which the surgeons
removed the entire right half of her liver, the small bile duct from the
remaining left lobe was injured. Dr.
Keir was able to repair it and leave a soft plastic drain in place. It
immediately began to drain bile from the liver to a sterile collecting bag. Leticia did very well post-operatively, but by
two weeks she was draining 400 to 500 cc of bile a day. This could not go on indefinitely.
During her hospitalization, both
Leticia and her mother prayed to receive Christ. The sparkling joy of this little girl after
she received Jesus was extraordinary.
Visiting her when we made our daily surgery rounds was the brightest
spot in the day!
About a
month after her operation we decided to take Leticia back to surgery to stop the leak. We knew this would be extremely difficult and
dangerous. That weekend, however, her
drain unexpectedly fell out, even though it had been sutured to her skin! The surgical team received the news with deep
foreboding. Nevertheless, that night
Leticia did fine, and in the morning the nurses reported that nothing was
leaking from the hole in her side where her drain had been! On rounds she smiled and insisted that she
was pain-free and hungry! A follow-up
ultrasound showed no bile collection outside of her liver. Two weeks later she was totally asymptomatic
and doing well, so we discharged her from the hospital, acknowledging that the
Lord had done something extraordinary to preserve her life. This week she came back for a follow up
visit, and again appeared to be in perfect health. The pathologist who reviewed the liver tissue
from her tumor reported it was a “hepatic sarcoma,” a rare tumor in children
that usually recurs.
Cases, like this one, encourage us to trust God to help us with difficult and complex operations, even though our resources are small. It is a privilege to help these who come to us, and to share with them the love and light of Jesus before it’s too late.
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