How lucky we are

My cousin Carl is in Africa right now, doing some sort of volunteer work. I'm unclear on what it is specifically, but it seems to involve missionaries, teaching English, and health care. He recently spent a day assisting in surgeries, and his recounting of the experience is eye-opening.

The first was an old man having prostate problems, which is not unknown to me, and had to have it removed. In america it's an outpatiant process done with lasers. A steel tube up the peepee and zap, however, here it is something different. It is cutting in through the abdoment, moving through the bladder, and removing it... with you hands. I watched as David McAdams reached into the body of a man blindly and had to shift as he manually, with his hands, removed this mans very large prostate.

It's something completely new to me, and though I watched probably with wide eyes, I was amazed at what sacrafice even surgeons are making when they give their time here. They sacrafice proper tools, proper procedures, and fifty years in medical advances to go back to the dark ages of surgery.

There are some pretty sad stories in that post, but also some uplifting bits.