The case of the month
Don Pedro* loves the open nature. Being a shepherd, he spends most of his time outside and wind and weather are his life. You could say, that the 65 year old is tough. He speaks no unnecessary words about a bruise on his leg or a cut on his arm. But when he fell last Thursday, his stomach hurt so badly, that he chewed on coca leaves to numb the pain. Since centuries the Quechua Indians know the effect of the pain reducing coca leaves. For Pedro the pain just kept getting worse. During the night his daughter-in-law brought him to the hospital Diospi Suyana.
When Dr. Jens Haßfeld did a physical examination and put light pressure on the stomach, the Quechua-Indian winced and moaned. Obviously there was a serious problem. The x-ray confirmed this suspicion. There was a trace of air above the liver. Somewhere in the abdominal cavity an organ had burst and air had gotten into the cavity. Since the x-ray had been taken while the patient was standing, the air had collected underneath the diaphragm.
Dr. Matthias Stephani, who is helping out as a surgeon for the 9th time, shortly thereafter opened the abdominal cavity. To his amazement, he found the rest of the coca leaves in the abdomen -outside of the intestinal loop. The German from the north, is most likely the first European surgeon that has ever discovered coca leaves in this place. After a long search he was able to discover the hole in the colon. Because of the acute abdominal infection, he put in a colostomy and flushed the abdomen with sodium-chlorid-solution. By the handover in the morning, the patient looked worried, but after all he was still alive. Who will take care of the many sheep now? * (name changed)
