FINALLY INTERNET

I am so sorry. The internet has been down since Tuesday. For all those families and freinds checking in, we are fine. We have been exceptionally busy but we are all OK. SO let me catch you all up- Tuesday was a busy OR day. We closed a 21 year old woman with bladder extrophy and that took one table all day. The other table was busy wth some tricky reconstructive issues as well. The tally for the for entire trip- Dr Bellinger said "I have never seen this before" five times, and Dr Schneck said a similar thing three times. MOst of the time he just shook his head. The days have gotten hotter and there are some occassional flies in the OR. But we have settled into a routinue and move smoothly. The resdients at KATH faculty scrub in foe most of the cases if not all after 10 am. There are currently no urology residents but the general surgery residents have been assisting. The recovery room has gotten very crowded. There was a man boarding down there for days- pretty much fending for himself. I think at one point some one gave him water. No one rounded on him and he just lay there. The second day a dorsal slit was performed on him by the general surgeons for a paraphimosis. We heard about that after the fact - poor guy. What was more heart braking was a baby there fro three days- no one held him or bathed him. We gave him water and some toys and one of the nurses gave him one meal a day. We never say his mother. We were told it was because there was no room upstairs- but since some of our babies were sleeping only one to a bed- that could not be true. We alos were told his mother was waiting outside- but our mothers were allowed to come back and be with the babies. So either they were treating our children differently or there was something up. We all agreeed it was the later with a samll element fo the former. But finally the nurses from the wards came to collect him. The nurses here are very dedicated but they do less nursing and caretaking that in the states. IN our wards the mothers take care fo teh children and the adults have to be pretty sufficent and take care of themselves. Stacie Pearce and Mrs Bellinger have been doing a great job in recovery room. They have been caring for the children as well as educating the mothers. IN addition they have been dealing with a lot of the logistics and helping find our supplies. The do a fair amount of trouble shooting. We finished late on Tues and left the OR at 9:30. Our dedicated driver took us to dinner and we got a little carried away with a lazy susan on the table and a few dishes went flying. We do not stop for lunch and a fwe mornings also had to skip breakfast. We much on granola bars between cases and then wait to dinner to eat. Just like resisdency... If I SEE ANOTHER GRANOLA BAR IN THE NEXT THREE WEEKS I am going to scream.

~Stephanya Shear