Tidbits

Lately, many things have conspired against the regular updating of this blog. My computer charger died (should have a new one coming from the states this week) and we've both been working more than full time.  But, trust me, life here has not been boring.  We have a lot to tell you! Here are a few tidbits.

One of the nice things about living here on the compound, especially now that we are both working full-time, is that people will occasionally come to our door to sell us food. Chickens and sauce come on Saturday, Samosas on Thursday, and you can buy fruits and vegetables from the trader's shack on Mondays.  One evening during our first week here we were both exhausted and hungry. I grilled some tuna sandwiches with the bread we had left...but our meal was missing something. Just as we were sitting down to eat around 8pm, someone knocked on the door selling fresh onion rings!!! What a blessing...

Delicious onion rings!

 Here we re-use almost everything, including all of our ziploc bags...here is our ziploc-bag "laundry line"

Our kitchen window/ ziploc bag dryer

One day during my first week of work, I finished in the operating room and headed over the the outpatient department to help the resident finish up for the day. He had saved the cases he wasn't sure about.  For the medical folk out there, here is an x-ray from a little 2-year-old girl whose mom noticed a mass bulging above her sternum and clavicle.  Not too hard to diagnose with such a classic x-ray, figuring out what to do for her in this setting is the hard part.

Thymoma

It's hot here. The operating rooms have air-conditioning, which makes operating possible (and helps prevent severe dehydration). However, even though the ORs aren't 110F like the outdoors, they are still warm (compared to a 68-70F OR in the US). I never used to sweat while operating, but I do now.  Even my hands sweat inside my gloves, giving me prune-fingers after just a little while operating! Sorry, kind of gross, I know. But, that's reality here.

Nope, nobody dumped water over me. I made it all myself.