For the 50th anniversary celebrations of Hospital Vozandes del Oriente (HVO) many stories and memories were received from both national and missionary ex-staff. This is one from Lyndal Maxwell, x-ray and ultrasound tech. at HVO 2001-2005.

Perfect Timing!

Working visitors often provide expertise at our hospital (HVO) for periods from a week or two and up to several months. They help by filling in temporary vacancies in permanent staff positions arising from missionary furloughs, vacations or illnesses. These visitors are a blessing to the hospital staff because of their willingness to travel to Shell to fill a critical need.

I remember one such visitor, Dr John Raaf, a just-retired general surgeon from Cleveland, Ohio. Dr Raaf came to Shell for two weeks to provide surgical coverage during part of the time the regular surgeon was away. During his visit, a 32-year-old Ecuadorian woman with the unusual symptoms of painless jaundice and blood in the stool came to HVO to seek help. The patient, Edith Gomez, had already visited several different doctors near her home in Ambato, but she grew increasingly concerned and decided to come to HVO.

Edith was diagnosed with obstruction of the common bile duct, the cause of which was uncertain, so she was scheduled for surgery. Soon after starting the operation, Dr. Raaf discovered a golf ball-sized mass in the head of the pancreas – apparently pancreatic cancer. During a more than 10-hour operation he was able to perform a complicated procedure called a “Whipple pancreaticoduodenectomy”. This surgery involved removing the head of the pancreas that contained the tumor, resecting part of the stomach and intestine, removing the gallbladder; then connecting everything back together again so that it functioned normally!

Under the attentive care of HVO staff over the following week, Edith recovered and later returned home with her family. An amazing part of Edith’s story is that this challenging Whipple operation is normally performed only in the largest, most sophisticated medical centers by a specially trained surgical team. Dr. Raaf “just happened” to be an oncologic general surgeon who specializes in the care of patients with soft tissue tumors. He managed to perform this surgery in Edith Gomez using only the equipment available in Shell, and with the assistance of an operating room team who had no prior experience with this type of surgery. More incredibly, he “just happened” to be in Shell at the exact same time that Edith Gomez decided to seek help at HVO. A remarkable story of God’s perfect timing!