I had a picture in my mind of what the OR would be like here. I expected a makeshift tent perhaps like on the set of the old show MASH, but was surprised to find an actual OR. However, that is where my surprise ended. Anesthesia is limited, equipment is close to non-existent. I watched a patient wake up during surgery. Our doctors taught Dr. Nuwas and the medical students how to remove a tumor the size of a baseball froma seven-year-old boy. This poor child had retinoblastoma – the tumor had ruptured through his eyeball. The pain was extradorinary, and no doctors in Tanzania knew what to do for this child. In the US, this malignant tumor would have been discovered quickly and he potentially would live a long life. Here, the surgery was palliative, only serving to remove the tumor and give the child a few months with far less pain before he dies.
