last week was a busy one. i spent most of it in the operating room. dr. b. operated late into the night a couple times, and all day saturday too. there are just so many kids coming in with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. i got to "scrub in", which means i put on the sterile gown and gloves and passed instruments, suctioned oozing blood, etc. etc. i also watched a couple other neat surgeries, like the resection of a huge (like 1 foot long huge) testicular tumor. one night i stayed up almost until the sun came up watching about the most epic sugery ever. this somali guy had come in with a tumor about the size of a football in the middle of his head and neck. so the kenyan plastic surgeon here decided to take er out. he had to peel back the guy's entire face, and dissect everything below it down around the carotid artery (it was suspended in mid air) all the way to the spinal bones in the back of the guy's neck. it basically took all day and all night. that was definitely one of those "wow" moments - to see basically everything between the neck and brain completely gone, and then put back together again. the surgeon kept sending me up to the reference room to find out what artery he was likely come upon next! there was also an ear nose and throat team here repairing cleft lips, so i got to watch them do those surgeries for a day, which was really interesting too.
one day i went to a home for disabled children in a place called thika with dr. b. and a group of visiting american southern ladies. its called joytown, and it was alot of fun. i argued with some of the ladies about politics (they started it). joytown is run by an ngo that dr. b. started. there are hundreds of children there who have all kinds of severe physical and mental problems; its quite the place. actually a lot of the kids with problems resulting from hydrocephalus and spina bifida here at the hospital end up there, so it was interesting to see the track that life takes for many of them. to be honest, normally i'm not all that inclined to spend time with mentally challenged kids, but i had about the most fun i've had in a long time with them there. i sat down in a wheelchair and started wheeling around with them, and then a bunch of them decided to push me around the entire place in my wheelchair, and next thing i knew an hour had gone by!
one day i went to a home for disabled children in a place called thika with dr. b. and a group of visiting american southern ladies. its called joytown, and it was alot of fun. i argued with some of the ladies about politics (they started it). joytown is run by an ngo that dr. b. started. there are hundreds of children there who have all kinds of severe physical and mental problems; its quite the place. actually a lot of the kids with problems resulting from hydrocephalus and spina bifida here at the hospital end up there, so it was interesting to see the track that life takes for many of them. to be honest, normally i'm not all that inclined to spend time with mentally challenged kids, but i had about the most fun i've had in a long time with them there. i sat down in a wheelchair and started wheeling around with them, and then a bunch of them decided to push me around the entire place in my wheelchair, and next thing i knew an hour had gone by!
