Bangladesh Day 1

My name is Josephine and I am a 4th year resident from University of Washington. I’m traveling with Dr. Sakti Das to the LAMB hospital in Parbatipur, Bangladesh and Bhopal, India. I left Seattle on 9/20 with an XL REI duffel bag full of sutures, gloves and catheters plus a brand new bladder scanner and glidescope from Verathon. My trip to Bangladesh took a total of 19 hours of flight time and plus 11 hours stop over in San Francisco and Singapore. I arrived in Dhaka, the capital, at 11pm in the middle of a thunderstorm and stayed at the LAMB guest house in Dhaka. The following day, I met Dr. Das and Dr. Gopalakrishna at the Dhaka airport. I was standing outside the car when I hear a cry "Josephine" and saw a tall Indian gentleman walking towards me. Together, the three of us and 2 other LAMB employees drove to the hospital. It was a 7 hour trip through a beautiful countryside with a lot of rice fields. The LAMB complex consists of several buildings around the hospital. It provides comprehensive medical care for the surrounding areas. When we arrived, we went straight to the hospital to meet our patients for tomorrow. One young man has recurrent stricture disease who will need a redo posterior urethroplasty. A young woman has urinary incontinence and female epispadias. After seeing the inpatients, we walked to clinic and were surrounded by patients asking to come in. Since there is no in house urologist, patients with urological problems are either referred to other hospitals or wait until Dr. Das’ yearly visit. In clinic, we saw an 8 year old with cloacal extrophy, adult hypospadia, urethrocutaneous fistulas and others. We made a list of patients for surgery and management plans for non-operative patients. As our list of surgical cases grew, I became more excited. This is only the first day. I can’t wait until tomorrow.

~Jhtamola