Tuesday
We arrived at the clinic bright and early this morning, ready to perform our ACL reconstructions. For training purposes, it’s best to have both Dr. Hsin and Dr. Bierbrauer in the OR teaching the local Ortho doc Dr. Kanora. Due to the lack of a full size autoclave, there is over an hour and a half of turnover time for sanitizing equipment and prepping patients, so with two sets of usable equipment we were able to stagger all four surgeries throughout the day. Dr. Kanora is the orthopedic surgeon at Jeremiah’s Hope clinic and today was the first day he was able to scrub in and learn hands-on ACL techniques.
Our last surgery of the day was on Yuth, a former professional soccer player for the Cambodia Junior National Team. He tore his ACL during a match against Australia about four years ago and has been unable to play since then. He is really hoping to get back into playing soccer, but in the meantime he started volunteering at youth soccer camps for underserved communities in the Phnom Penh area. He works for a church and has found a lot of faith in Jesus through his injury, which he thought would be career-ending. When he heard about our trip, he felt excited to have the opportunity to heal his knee and try out for the National Team again. We are looking forward to sharing more of his story with you, so stay tuned for updates on Yuth and his journey.
At the end of our long surgery day, our team headed back to the hotel and decompressed before going to dinner. We went to a pizza place recommended by Yuth and walked around the riverside near the Cambodian Palace.
Tomorrow we will have two ORs operating at the same time with two ACL reconstructions, an ostechondroma removal from the left tibia of a missionary boy, and a non-union sequestrum of the left ulna of a young girl.
