Feb 26, 2008 – Day 5
We started off the day with a hearty pancake breakfast. It is surprising how easily Rachel and Helen (our hosts here at the Baptist guesthouse) manage to put together authentic American cuisine each and every day for us. We packed down a couple of flapjacks and caught a ride with trusty Ezekil to the Evangel hospital.
We broke up into a couple of groups with Pauletta , aka Jummai(which is her Hausa name) carrying on with the urodynamics. She keeps telling us Jummai means Friday, but we are all pretty sure there is a more ominous meaning….
Sherri, Susan and Catherine carried on with seeing some patients who were not seen the previous day. They were again quite busy – the bature doctors are very popular here.
We were segregated along gender lines as the boyz(Tim, Tom and Kurt) went to the OR to start the first case of our trip – a urethroplasty. We managed to provide excellent exposure of the urethra prior to the placing the buccal graft in an onlay fashion that was a new technique to the surgeons here. Susan joined us for a couple of very difficult PV slings using fascia lata in women who had numerous VVF repairs. It was a reminder that operating on patients who have undergone multiple procedures is a humbling experience.
We returned to the guesthouse with one less team member, as Kurt had to return to the US for a conference. He will be missed by many, but not me. We learned over dinner that the constant sand in the air (causing dust and dirt to accumulate quite quickly on everything), is actually sand from the Sahara known as Harmatan. We with our brains full to the brim with all the information we can handle as we drop off to a restful sleep thinking of…………
Tim’s Lesson of the Day:
No matter how good the tissue looks, always remember the patient has had 3 previous repairs…
Tim “Blogman” Davies
~Catherine deVries
No comments:
Post a Comment