Feb. 15, 2014

Valentine's Day has passed.  Dolores gave me a nice Chadian outfit
to wear for Valentine's day.  We had a special supper and vespers
about love. It was very nice.

Addison has passed her six months mark and is now starting on solid
foods.  She chowed down quite well her first solids as we watched.
She has two teeth now also.

Todays sermon in church (by a local Chadian pastor) was about fighting
the good fight of faith with the fruits of the spirit comparing that
to members of a football (soccer) team which was quite good.

We had a recent unusual case of a 9-year-old girl that came in with right
lower quadrant pain, but she also a very large mass in her upper abdomen.
She had been told almost a year ago that she had a mass, possibly
ovarian that needed removed, but did not.  Now at surgery she had a
torsion of a right ovarian mass that apparently was this same mass
that was seen a year ago.  Surgery was quick and simple.    

Another little boy hardly a year-old came in with severe shortness of breath
and stridor.  We could hardly feel a soft mass in his neck slightly
to right of midline.  We aspirated some purulence which seemed to
help some, but next day he was worse so had to do something more
drastic.  We stuck a knife in his neck hoping to not hit any major
blood vessels.  At first got nothing so stuck it deeper yet and got a
large amount of purulence out.  After a few days he is breathing
normally now and has minimal drainage but apparently it was pressing
on his airway.  

Another little girl about age 1-yr had an epigastric hernia we thought,
but when we operated there was no hernia but still a mass so 
opened still farther and found pus between her fascia and
peritoneum.  So we cleaned that out and packed it open, possibly closing
later after the infection is gone.  It sometimes seems surgery rounds
is abcess rounds.  We are still doing lots of hernias and hydroceles.
We have  logged about 85 procedures so far this month but there are
a lot waiting to be done.

We should be starting  home in about six weeks.  We plan to be in
Oklahoma by April 2 and plan to drive up to Union College April 3 for
the Alumni weekend than begins that night.  We have a room reserved
for April 3, 4, 5 in Rees Hall thanks to Gary Gray (another 50-yr
Unionite that plans to be there).  We plan to be in Jay, Ok the 2nd
weekend for a baptism at the Adventist church there.  We probably
will be in Texas the 3rd weekend to visit Edwin and family and Harold
Wallar and go see the Texas bluebonnets in the hill country then
meander west to Ariz and Calif to see Gloria (Dolores ' sister) and
others; enjoying the desert along the way, perhaps even up into Utah.
On the way back to Chad we leave about June 1 and plan to tour Turkey
a little with Olen parents (Kermit and Ronnalee Netteberg) seeing
the 7 churches area etc.

Looking forward to see some of you along the way.
Our emails are  drbland@sbcglobal.net  and  dfbland01@gmail.com
Love,    Rollin and Dolores