Emily Kerstetter, the 16-year-old Ellicott City resident who was injured in the July 11 terrorist bombings in Uganda, had her sixth surgery in South Africa Monday, and it is still uncertain when she will return to the United States, according to her grandmother, Trish Becker.“Emily just today had another surgery and the doctors felt very positive about it,” Becker said, adding that the surgery has also given the family a “more optimistic feeling.”
But this surgery is not the end of Emily’s medical complications resulting from the blast that occurred while she on a mission trip to help build a wall around a church and school in a poor area of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city.
In addition to a shattered tibia, Emily has suffered from “a great deal of other complications” from the blast, Becker said, though she wouldn’t specify what the complications were out of respect for Emily’s parents’ wishes.
“Her future is going to be filled with a lot of surgeries,” she said.
Emily left for the mission trip with her other grandmother, Joanne Kerstetter, and 13 other members of the Christ Community United Methodist Church in Selinsgrove, Pa., on June 15. Nine of the group members left Uganda on July 7, but Emily, her grandmother and four others extended their trip until July 13.
The remaining six group members were having dinner and watching the final match of the World Cup at the Ethiopian Village Restaurant on July 11 when the blast occurred. Emily, one of the five members of her group that was injured, was flown to a trauma center in Johannesburg accompanied by her grandmother, who had a broken arm.
Becker asked the community to keep Emily in their thoughts.
“Please just keep sending a prayer for her because she needs it,” she said.
Emily, who is going into her junior year at Mount de Sales in Catonsville, is staying in the intensive care unit of Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg. When she is stabilized, she will be moved to Johns Hopkins, but Becker said it is still uncertain when that will be.
“Our biggest fear right now is infection,” Becker said. “She’s got a lot of exposed tissue.”
Having talked to Emily’s mother, Jennifer Kerstetter, who is at the hospital with Emily, on Sunday, Becker said Emily has amazed everyone with the amount of pain she has been able to bravely endure.
“She has a very positive attitude,” she said, “and she’s in relatively good spirits.”
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