Dr. Andrew Browning is tired. He spends his days and nights performing surgery on women who find their way to the Fistula Hospital in Barhirdar, working with the staff to ensure that the hospital runs smoothly and is free from the spread of disease, and tending to his own family. Some women walk days to get to see him and he has to make hard decisions on who gets treated and who gets turned away.
In addition to all of this, he also works on his goal of establishing a C-section program at an outer clinic hospital in Mota to prevent fistula and prolapse cases form the bush rural areas. Most often, if a women can walk to a hospital within days of continued labor instead of weeks, a C-section will prevent the horrific fistula from occurring and/or death of the baby and mother. Reality hits Andrew hard when a woman shows up after walking for weeks, carrying a dead baby in her womb. Worse, is when he hears of a lay “doctor” or husband who tries to extract the baby without anesthesia or sterile tools.
Andrew needs many things himself.
He needs more doctors to come to Ethiopia and help him. He needs reliable water at the hospital in Mota. He needs more sources of support for the work he is performing.
And he could use a bit of cheer in the form of a rare bite of aged cheese, an ice cold beer or a laugh or two.
Weary, with his face lined from processing all that he sees, he is a tender man with extraordinary devotion to these women. I can only imagine how he feels when his head rests on his pillow at night and darkness tries relentlessly to still his mind.
