PATHOLOGY FROM HAITI

I just now finished going through all the pathology reports from the specimens we brought back.  There were 11 specimens from ENT.  I don't know about Urology or OB/GYN.

I've made an individual page for each patient to return to Dr. Gardy, the Haitian doctor who administers the hospital in Pierre Payen.  Each page has the name, location of the biopsy and diagnosis along with a photo of the patient or tumor.  It was hard to keep them all straight.  The handwritten names were hard to read and I had some spelled differently than the lab, so it took very careful comparisons.  Fortunately I kept a written list on my phone of all my operative patients and their diagnosis.  I'm very glad I took as many photos as I did.  Many photos included the specimen bottle right over the registration paper with the patient's name on it.  I'll e-mail them to Haiti, but also hand deliver them when I see Dr. Gardy in May when he travels to Nebraska.  We are hoping to have him speak at Federated Church either May 18 or 25th.

Of the 3 massive thyroids, 2 were multinodular goiters and one was a Hurthle cell adenoma.  Not cancer.

Multinodulaar goiter, 32 years old. She did great!

We had one Hodgkins lymphoma and one squamous cell carcinoma in the ear.

Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  This is a very treatable and potentially curable type of cancer.  I have been in communicaiton with him via the internet and he may be coming to the US for treatment.  Pray for him.

The cheek lesion in the 12 year old boy, even with a generous biopsy is inconclusive.  I put my money on a parasitic infection, but they didn't see any parasites.  Very weird.

Cheek mass.  Parasite? 

There was the worse fungal sinusitis I've ever seen without being a 'face-eating fungus'. It was eroded into the eyes.

Fungal sinusitis.  If you look closely you can see polyps in her nose and the left eye deviates outward. 

The massive facial tumor looks like a salivary gland malignancy.  This was posted a few posts back and is worth looking at if you haven't seen it yet.

The massive jaw tumors included ameloblastoma.  There is another picture posted earlier.

Ameloblastoma.  A low grade, slow growing malignancy which could be cured by removing his jaw.

Squamous cell carcinoma of the jaw.

Squamous cell carcinoma of the jaw. 

 An odontogenic cyst.

Odontogenic Cyst.  The oral pathologist from UNMC is still looking at this.

There was nothing straightforward in Pierre Payen.

We have so many "worried well" here (yes, there is even a diagnosis code for "worried well"), that it just messes with my mind to see so much really dramatic and terrible pathology so concentrated and so advanced.
Please pray for all these folks who did not ask to be born in a country without the capability to treat these early.

Ciao. NN