It is still warm with 100-105 (40 C) in the house in daytime and down to 90 F by morning. One turns over in bed to change sides that are wet with perspiration. One wakes up to drink water instead of going to the bathroom. Fortunately, for me it is about 10 cooler in the OR than outside. Our A/C is not real good but it helps in the OR. The humidity is about 7-10% most of the time although it got up to 40% a few days ago.
We had 2 senior med students (deferred mission appointees), from Loma Linda University the past month. One was Steve Tharp (father was director of Hope TV Channel) and the other was James Fernando (wife is a physician assistant). One plans to be a mission surgeon and the other a family practide. We had Dr. Greg Shank here the past 2 weeks. He is a surgeon from Reedsport, Ore, USA and did lots of surgeries here so I had some time to do other things such as helping David Hendricks with electric and plumbing on the new buildings. Several years ago Greg spent 5 years in Koza, Cameroon. (Can not go there now because of Boko Haram) His wife is a Family Practice doctor. He came with a man that was to do the "annual" check up on the mission plane.
We heard that a big tumor (16 kg) in S America made national or international news but I suspect there are others especially in Africa that never get reported that are that large or larger. We had one here a few months ago that was 17 kg but it was not reported to any "news agency." Very frequently we have one that is 6-10 kg. We had another sequestrum this time in a little girl in her distal tibia. She came in walking! The dead bone fragment was removed and she should do well. We have had 2 different kids with bladder stones in the past 2 days. We had a lady with a tumor of her wrist (tumor removed 3 yrs ago) that now returned larger than before. She did not want amputation of her hand and forearm but probably eventually will need to have that anyway as all her flexor tendons, radius nerve, radial artery went through the tumor that we excised. Not sure if the hand will survive the surgery. Don't know what kind of it was but it had a lot of black pigment in it and was somewhat cystic. Last week we had a forearm amputation for dead hand with maggots in it. We have a lady with large breasts with necrotic distal part of each breast that needs bilat mastectomy.
The "election campaign" is supposed to kick off this Sunday the 20th. There could be some demonstrations with a large field of candidates but don't expect any of them to gain much foothold against the present "president" who has help "office" for many years. Many of the locals call him a dictator. However the economy is very bad now with low oil prices and many government employees not getting paid on time. There is "no money" to fix any roads (there are very few roads in the country to fix anyway). There are still lots of military check points around the country allegedly to prevent Bolo Haram from gaining access.
We are healthy presently. Dolores is busy working mangoes besides looking after grandkids.
Our emails are drbland@sbcglobal.net and dfbland01@gmail.com
Love, Rollin and Dolores
Rollin and Dolores Bland
Hopital Adventiste de Bere
Boite Postal 52
Kelo, Tandjile, Chad, Afrique
Blog www.weareamissionarybland.blogspot.com
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