It has been quite busy this past week. We have done about 4 surgeries per day including today and Pediatrics has been almost 60 patients so a total patients about 80 on Friday but a lot were discharged over the weekend so it is down today to less than 60 total. Almost all Pediatrics have IV ‘s going with Quinine. I hear the MCD (our local district medical officer that has given us trouble in the past) is to be looking over Pediatrics tomorrow. Was to be today but did not show. Another officer was to be here with him. Our two kids with perforated intestine from typhoid that we repaired are both doing well. The boy with a leg contracture and extruded piece of tibia from an old fracture is doing very well. The relatives are doing a great job of doing the stretches on his knee so that it extends to about150 degrees now. The area of his lower leg that has no skin I hope to be able to do a skin graft on soon, maybe tomorrow. Another lady has large denuded areas on both legs but not quite granulated enough yet for skin graft. The old man that had had 4 surgeries on his abdomen with the last one being a bowel resection and reanastomosis is eating well and walking some and went home yesterday. I did a prostatectomy and urethra dilation on a man that I had temporarily put in an IV canula into his bladder to keep him comfortable over the weekend draining it through the IV canula. I wish we had some more suprapubic temporary drains that one can just stick in quickly and drain the bladder until a surgery can be done. We still have not had any one that will submit to a vasectomy even for free. The women have to have a tubal ligation instead. We had two C-sections for transverse lie one day apart.
For those of you that received emails and others for special prayer last week for Olen, we thank you for your prayers. He was very sick vomiting with malaria and had IV fluid and quinine running until he went to the airport and got on the plane. He had no more vomiting and was able to keep down medicines and they all got back to Washington, DC without further complications and are doing well now. The next big event is for Danae to have her baby. They plan to have it in Massachusetts at Bay State Hospital where they did their residencies.
The weather here has been very nice with rain every 2 or 3 days and temps in the 70’s and 80’s F. So far no floods like last year. We had lots of thunder and lightning and rain Sat. night.
The mangoes are gone and there are not tomatoes yet and only a few cucumbers. Most vegetables etc have not had time to grow since beginning of rainy season.
Tomorrow is the last day for the two medical students from LLU then they start back to the USA. They say they have learned a lot and enjoyed their stay here. They definitely have seen things that they would not see back in the USA. They have been taking turns alternate days assisting in surgery or doing rounds with our NP on Peds. Our NP is scheduled to leave in about 3 wks I think. She will be missed. Most of malaria is treated by protocol dosage according to weight so hopefully we can get by and hopefully the malaria season will begin to decrease. There is also quite a bit of typhoid.
Our emails are dfbland01@gmail.com and drbland@sbcglobal.net
Our phone is 235 62674586
Continue to pray for us and that volunteers can come finish some buildings including our house. Lots of cabinet and shelves need to be built in each of the buildings.
Love, Rollin and Dolores
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