Monday, August 17, 2015

August 15, 2015

What is a urologist? Is it a doctor that primarily takes care of male patients? Is it someone that mainly takes care of the urinary system? Does he/she have to be a doctor? Does he/she have to have boards in urology? Does he/she need to know surgery especially of the urinary tract? We have a janitor nurse "surgeon" that does prostectomies quite well as well as some general surgery procedures In fact he is probably as good at many procedures as most of the Chadian doctors. 
 
I don't claim to be a urologist even though I wish I was one many times here in Chad. I am not board certified in anything although I have had many years experience doing almost anything to the urinary tract and other things. Today I had 3 prostatectomies plus a reconstruction of a man that had had "3 surgeries by urologist" in Ndjamena, Chad according to his record for urinary retention and left with a suprapubic foley drainage the past 6 years although his main complaint was pain in his proximal right thigh which I could not relate to his other problem. I was finally convinced that I should try to help this man with his problem of the urinary tract and was able to reconstruct his urethra or dilate making a new tract through a terrible scar and closing his suprapubic wound. It all seemed to go quite well and hopefully the poor man will have a semi-normal urinary tract after he heals from all this. I had almost refused to try to do surgery on him but as I had done a few other similar ones, decided to tackle this one. I also did a torsion of a testicle surgery today but it was too late to save the testicle so had to do an orchiectomy. 

Today we had a very large hemithyroidectomy and all went well. Not sure if malignant or not. We also had a posterior dislocation of an elbow from an accident 4 months ago and reduced with general anesthesia. He will have severe arthritis but hopefully it will be functional as it was totally immobile before. 
 
Dolores misses taking care of the grandkids but they will be back next week.
Our emails are drbland@sbcglobal.net and dfbland01@gmail.com
Love
Rollin and Dolores Bland
Hopital Adventiste de Bere
Boite Postal 52
Kelo, Tandjile, Chad, Afrique

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