Death Under the Mango Treee

    Mangoes taste so good and anyone knows that the best fruit of whatever tree is way up towards the top such as cherries, apples, or peaches. But there is a problem with mangoes. The trees get quite large ie. 60 feet tall and the limbs are very brittle. Sometimes they break off spontaneously. If someone climbs a tree the limbs can break off without warning. More people die from falling out of a mango tree than from hippo bites at least around here. Incidentally our two men with hippo bites on their thighs are doing ok and appear that they will survive. We have had two injured from mango trees today one with minor cuts and the other with bilateral fracture radius and ulna and fracture distal humerus in the elbow and fracture of skull in the frontal area. Don’t know if he will survive or not. We recently had another that died from a fall from a mango tree. I love good juicy mangoes but I won’t climb a tree to get one to prevent it from getting bruised. It can just get bruised when it is knocked off the tree. People have very long poles or sticks with a hook on the end to knock a mango off the tree. But remember even the mango tree can be deadly and needs our respect. They are the best shade trees around with the most dense shade.
   Our 3 partial thyroidectomies or goiters and two thyroglossal duct cysts have all done well and have gone home.
   We had a fatality in the OR recently in a young lady that had a large perforation of terminal ileum from typhoid. We did the full “code” in the OR but no go. She waited too long to come to the hospital. In retrospect did we not give her enough IV fluids or not enough of ? or was there an anesthetic problem or too much sepsis. We don’t have the luxury of consulting with infectious disease specialist or cultures or x-ray or whatever. We are it. Someday we hope to at least have a digital x-ray. It sure would help especially with the bone cases. Our lab is pretty minimal also. We have to depend on physical diagnosis the most and most of the time we are right we think.
Life is tough here in Chad. The life expectancy here is one of the lowest in the world at 47. Death is very much a part of life here.
   We are certainly looking forward to that better land wherein dwelleth righteousness and there will be no more death or sorrow As one sees the events of the world surely the Coming of Jesus can’t be too long away.
Our emails are drbland@sbcglobal.net and dfbland01@gmail.com
Love Rollin and Dolores