A Piercing

They have been through a lot, these people of South Sudan.  Many have been displaced.  Many have seen family members perish violently.  Many have seen friends die.  It is very hard to put it all into context.  Most of it is hard to even imagine.

Notice the number spikes that are not visible above.

I had a hard time imagining what I saw last night.  A local Dinka man, a one time soldier, a one time pastoralist farmer came into our compound with a spear imbedded firmly into his body.  From what I could understand, the woman that he wanted to court into a marriage had chosen a different man.  This was the last straw.  This man had been through too much, and this was just one more thing that he didn't want to deal with.  But he did deal with it.  He took his Dinka spear and stuck it into his body as far as he could, as far as it would go.  And it went far.  We took him to the OT to see what we could do, knowing that he would probably die.  The spear, a fearsome thing, went through his lower chest and upper abdomen.  It pierced through his xyphoid, and went through and through the liver.  It glanced off of his heart, but did not obviously damage it.  It went all the way to his spine.  We wrestled it loose, by spreading out the damaged liver.  The large spikes on the spearhead seemed to anchor it to everything, damaging organs with every movement.  But we continued, and eventually freed the offending object.  We had no suction device, and essentially no cautery.  I pressed on both sides of the liver to try to stop the bleeding.  I held that pressure for minute after minute.  And the bleeding slowed, and then stopped.  We were able to start to close the incision.  This morning, he was alive.