Interesting Cases 2014

1. I saw a 3 year old child and mom in the consultation room. At 5 months of age the child has a serious illness and had to have a colostomy. Since that time they had not been able to have a reversal surgery until the mother or family could buy the stapling instrument necessary to do the surgery The child was normal in every other way, except that he had to wear pull ups since they didn’t have colostomy supplies.

2. A young man came in a wheelchair with open would from infections on both ankles. It had been present for months and he didn’t know how it started.

3. We had several kids with extra digits on their hand. We even had one with an extra thumb and one with fused third and fourth fingers.

4. Two children with hypospadius and epispadius deformities of the urinary tract.

5. One child that had an undescended testis.

6. Several young girls with keloids, some on the ears.

7. A 10 year old boy presented with a large neurofibroma of the right lower quadrant that we were able to debulk.

8. We had more Haitian patients that could not speak Spanish, just Creole. Fortunately we had two interpreters who spoke both and English as well.

9. Several patients with large hernias from prior surgery that would require larger surgeries than we could do. They hadn’t been done because the patients couldn’t afford the mesh necessary to repair the hernia. We were able to give some to them.

10. As usual there were many patients with high blood pressure. Had to cancel some patients who were told early in the project to take their meds and return only to still be too high. The highest I saw was 219/126.

11. One child came in for tonsillitis and the mom wanted us to do a tonsillectomy.

12. Some came in with arthritis which we couldn’t help and one lady came in to have her hernia fixed. When I ask where her hernia was she pointed to the C-collar she was wearing then produced an MRI showing her “herniated” disc.

13. Saw a 4 year old with a massive abdominal hernia that was the result of a surgery for a congenital abnormality where the stomach is outside the abdomen at birth.

14. I saw a mom and baby that was told that he had a hernia at 2 months of age but was anemic so they couldn’t operate. She has struggled for 2 years since she could not afford the meds to fix the anemia and afford the surgery. As it turns out the hernia is gone and the baby doesn’t need an operation after all.

15. We had a total of 4 cancellations due to excessive BMI and BP, but in each case we were able to fill the schedule with a patient who showed up NPO in case we had a cancellation to fill their slot.