Namaste from Day 3 of our surgical mission to Kathmandu,
We started our day with a brisk walk to NOH after a hearty breakfast at our hotel the Grand Norling. This walk although the same distance and path, changes every day. We see things we hadn't seen the previous day, kids playing in a puddle or bathing at the water spicier. We see new people like the school children in their uniforms walking to school. We saw a van almost hit this black calf that was sauntering across the street, the gentleman tried to pat him and shoo him off the road but the calf took his sweet time. The dogs are everywhere on our walk to the hospital and today we think they were barking at Jason but then a motorcycle came by and broke it up!
As we were entering the hospital through the side door, I saw a poster for the 15th Anniversary of NOH, and whose on the poster but yours truly and Dr. Prakash with the specs from our trip last year! To be honest, it made my day, week, year:)
As usual Jason and Kristi started setting up our registration area, making sure it was ready for any new patients, organizing our surgery charts and picking out little things to give to our patients on the wards as we changed into scrubs and started bringing things in the OR for the days surgeries, as is the case in the US sometimes fate gets in the way. When we were starting to get ready for the OR we found out that our 2 year old patient had eaten cereal at 7:30am, two hours before surgery time, so we pushed him back to 1300 and teed up the second patient to go first.
While waiting for the OR to get set up, Mike, Tom and I stared Morning rounds in the post op ward, passing out Carl's "cast cover monsters". Our patients had done well over night with their pain being managed by non narcotic pain medication. The nursing staff is fantastic and really know their patients!
We did 5 cases today including an assist on a bimalleolar ankle fracture by Cameron, one of the surgeons heading out to Nepalgung with Marc,Steve and Bo on Tuesday. Our cases included a neglected Clubfoot repair, rear foot joint fusion, calf muscle lengthening and debulking of a oddly presenting macrodactyly in a two year old. The cases were good and we worked hard.
I have to give a major shout out to Bo, our wonderful scrub tech who is dedicated to his craft and is trying to get Marta ready to handle our surgery days without him, as he is on the Nepalgung team with Marc, Steve and Cameron, he was showing her how to keep everything together including out instrument sets when they get sent for processing, teaching her how to open sterile instruments to be put on the field and how to keep track of our stuff.
Today also brought a visitor to the OR that had never even been in scrubs let alone the OR. Miss Kristi wanted to see a patient she met at registrations surgery, so we suited her up, taught her OR protocol and etiquette and sent her in with her camera! She learned a lot and even got to help circulate.
We did get a few new patients coming in to be seen as well as patients that were surgical candidates but had been postponed due to pneumonia or coughs. Our fearless team doctor evaluated them thoroughly and cleared them for surgery. We screened potential candidates and made up the remaining days surgery schedule.
As our cases went long and there had been a crazy rainstorm, we figured having dinner at the hotel would be a great idea. We planned for a 7:30 dinner and everyone relaxed, went running or swimming. 6 ish came and brought with it a partial blackout so most of us found ourselves in the bar,ordering Tuborg and chatting with one of our hosts Dolkar. She has a talent for speaking her mind about marriage in her culture and and some point with the Tuborg flowing we found out her talent was reading faces, she read all of our faces. You'll have to ask everyone how accurate she was!
Day three was ended with a great group dinner with the Tuborg and reminiscing flowing freely!!
Until tomorrow friends!
Peace, Dr Jennifer
We started our day with a brisk walk to NOH after a hearty breakfast at our hotel the Grand Norling. This walk although the same distance and path, changes every day. We see things we hadn't seen the previous day, kids playing in a puddle or bathing at the water spicier. We see new people like the school children in their uniforms walking to school. We saw a van almost hit this black calf that was sauntering across the street, the gentleman tried to pat him and shoo him off the road but the calf took his sweet time. The dogs are everywhere on our walk to the hospital and today we think they were barking at Jason but then a motorcycle came by and broke it up!
As we were entering the hospital through the side door, I saw a poster for the 15th Anniversary of NOH, and whose on the poster but yours truly and Dr. Prakash with the specs from our trip last year! To be honest, it made my day, week, year:)
As usual Jason and Kristi started setting up our registration area, making sure it was ready for any new patients, organizing our surgery charts and picking out little things to give to our patients on the wards as we changed into scrubs and started bringing things in the OR for the days surgeries, as is the case in the US sometimes fate gets in the way. When we were starting to get ready for the OR we found out that our 2 year old patient had eaten cereal at 7:30am, two hours before surgery time, so we pushed him back to 1300 and teed up the second patient to go first.
While waiting for the OR to get set up, Mike, Tom and I stared Morning rounds in the post op ward, passing out Carl's "cast cover monsters". Our patients had done well over night with their pain being managed by non narcotic pain medication. The nursing staff is fantastic and really know their patients!
We did 5 cases today including an assist on a bimalleolar ankle fracture by Cameron, one of the surgeons heading out to Nepalgung with Marc,Steve and Bo on Tuesday. Our cases included a neglected Clubfoot repair, rear foot joint fusion, calf muscle lengthening and debulking of a oddly presenting macrodactyly in a two year old. The cases were good and we worked hard.
I have to give a major shout out to Bo, our wonderful scrub tech who is dedicated to his craft and is trying to get Marta ready to handle our surgery days without him, as he is on the Nepalgung team with Marc, Steve and Cameron, he was showing her how to keep everything together including out instrument sets when they get sent for processing, teaching her how to open sterile instruments to be put on the field and how to keep track of our stuff.
Today also brought a visitor to the OR that had never even been in scrubs let alone the OR. Miss Kristi wanted to see a patient she met at registrations surgery, so we suited her up, taught her OR protocol and etiquette and sent her in with her camera! She learned a lot and even got to help circulate.
We did get a few new patients coming in to be seen as well as patients that were surgical candidates but had been postponed due to pneumonia or coughs. Our fearless team doctor evaluated them thoroughly and cleared them for surgery. We screened potential candidates and made up the remaining days surgery schedule.
As our cases went long and there had been a crazy rainstorm, we figured having dinner at the hotel would be a great idea. We planned for a 7:30 dinner and everyone relaxed, went running or swimming. 6 ish came and brought with it a partial blackout so most of us found ourselves in the bar,ordering Tuborg and chatting with one of our hosts Dolkar. She has a talent for speaking her mind about marriage in her culture and and some point with the Tuborg flowing we found out her talent was reading faces, she read all of our faces. You'll have to ask everyone how accurate she was!
Day three was ended with a great group dinner with the Tuborg and reminiscing flowing freely!!
Until tomorrow friends!
Peace, Dr Jennifer
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