"Once again, thanks so much for all you do. I had a wonderful, enriching experience and look forward to folding what I learned into my courses."

Our first week at the hospital is completed. It has been a week I will definently remember for the rest of my life, both in good and bad ways. Just after this first week, we ve learned so much that it feels like we ve been here much longer.

Overall the experience I've had in Mombasa and with the other students has been memorable. I have made some great new friends and will hopefully be able to visit them when we all return back to the states.

Today was surgery today and was very hectic. 4 women went into labor- 3 of which needed emergency C-sections. As Port Reitz Hospital only has one operating room, the third and fourth scheduled surgeries had to be pushed back to tomorrow so they had room to do the C-sections. Scott and I went into the second surgery- a thyroidectomy (removal of a goiter on the thyroid gland) only to be called out of it about an hour and a half in to "assist with an emergency". The one baby that was born normal was a still born and they were attempting to resuscitate it. The room was very hectic with one member of the team doing chest compressions while the others were hooking up oxygen to pump into the baby. After stabilizing the equipment- the doctors and nurses returned to the maternity ward to help the other 3 women in labor while scott and I continued care on the baby that was not breathing (it did have a pulse at this point). After an hour of giving the baby breathing assistance- it finally started to breathe on its own! Two hours after the baby initially arrived on our table, it was sent back to the maternity ward where it would continue to receive care. The baby's life will be very hard as the lack of an initial heart beat and lack of oxygen will result in cerebral palsy as a best case scenario. Scott and I concluded that we think the baby also had hydrocephalitis (water in the brain) which causes the head to be very large. The baby will have a very hard life- but it is alive!