Day 12: Tuktuk Ride and Party

I woke up around 6:45 and left for the hospital at 7:30am, the usual for this week. When we arrived, I headed up to the women's general ward, where I ended up getting herded into a conference meeting about complicated malaria. They talked about 30 to 45 minutes about identifying and treating complicated malaria before finally releasing us. There wasn't much for us to do around the general ward, so we headed to Casualties and Minor. Since those areas were also not busy, we went to the Major Theater to see what surgeries were taking place.

Surgery #1

DX: Left testicle

Operation: Orchidectomy

The patient in Theater 1 was a 6 month old with an undescended left testicle. The surgery was one I never really thought about seeing, but it was interesting watching them make the incisions and pull the testicle into the scrotum. Even still, I'm pretty sure that kind of surgery doesn't appeal to me. When they were stitching the incisions, we headed to Theater 4.

Surgery #2

DX: Right cornea and lens

Operation: Cornea Repair

The four year old patient in Theater 4 had some kind of trauma to the eye. We arrived at the surgery in mid-operation, so the surgeon was already using his binocular microscope. We stayed for a while, but we couldn't tell what was happening very well, so we headed to pediatrics.

One of the Canadian students who has been stationed in pediatrics this week showed us around. The kids seemed happy to see us, since they didn't have any toys or anything to keep them preoccupied while they waited for their bodies to heal. After touring the pediatrics ward, we went to the post-op orthopedic ward, where we saw the guy who jumped off the bridge, fractured his tibia, and later was beaten by security after running around the hospital frantically with a piece of glass he took from the window he shattered. It looked like they were changing the sheets of his bed, and he smiled and waved to us, maybe recognizing us from helping while he was in Casualties.

We found that there really wasn't much left to do in the hospital today, so we opted to take the tuktuk back to the housing complex at noon. Tuktuks are small, three-wheeled vehicles often used as taxis (though they're free for us as long as we're only going back and forth between our complex and the hospital). Since we arrived at the complex early, I decided to go ahead and do laundry before everyone else arrived. It took about an hour, but I was glad to have more clean clothes available.

Tuktuk!

We went swimming and hung out until dinner, which was noodles, rice, and beef sauce. After dinner, some medical students from Kenya and the UK came over for the party. I went to bed a bit early because I was tired, though apparently some people stayed up and continued drinking.

Dinner: rice, noodles, and beef sauce.