Wednesday, March 22, 2017

I was going to write this yesterday but found we had no water so had to tend to that before breakfast.  Our water pump had quit, apparently burned out or worn out.   "We pump many thousands of gallons of water daily.  They tell me that people from Bere town are coming to get water because wells are going dry.   Our last rainy season did not fill the water table up to near the top as usual.   It is a long time before there will be any water from the sky to put water in wells again at least until June or July..  It will take a lot of rain to soak this dry sandy ground again.   It is about 108F (about 42C) day and only 85 or 90F (72C) at night.  It was 92F last night in our bedroom at 2200.   We had a water pump to put in but did not have the proper connectors here or in Lai.   We bought another pump and finally found enough of the right fittings to connect it and had to redo the wiring somewhat.   That took most of the day.   Fortunately no real emergencies came in yesterday.   We plan to get proper fittings for the other pump so that when we need it we will have it.   There is another well that had not been used but recently had a pump put in it but not connected to the system or to its own water tower tank which is not built yet.   We made a connection from that pump ;into our main system so that hopefully now we can have back up system somewhat .  We really need the water tank built on top of the tower that is already built.  
A few days ago our blood bank refrigerator quit so we let them borrow our little one until another one can be bought.   Hopefully the blood was not damaged too much.   It will cost about USD500 or 600 to replace it.  It was about USD350 to fix the water pump.   I got word today that our generator has been repaired and will be brought back maybe tomorrow so I will need to spend some time helping or putting it back together connecting back to the motor and the electric system.   It cost about USD1000 for that besides our labor for everything.  
Our hospital census and our surgery load has decreased markedly this month.   Revenue is much decreased.   Money is scarce as had poor crops and low prices, prices are low for the country.   They say there is some kind of problem getting cattle across the border into Cameroon and Nigeria where they usually sell them.  
We have another lip to repair after a fight with another woman 10 days ago.  I saw a huge goiter but I don't want to tackle it unless we have better anesthesia and have Danae here to help and still may not as it is HUGE.   We did a mastectomy and axillary node dissection recently and she did well.   We recently had a man with severe right heart failure with very distended neck veins and short of breath even sitting up although his lungs were clear but very distant eart sounds .   We think he had a cardiomyopathy.   We don't have much to work with for cardiac patients.   He wanted to go see a "cardiologist" in NDJ.   I don't know if he made it there or not.   We had a placenta previa recently with mother and baby doing ok after c-section.  We also had a retained head with rest of baby hanging out and she walked in.  Of course baby was dead.   Was able to manipulate the head and extract it without too much problem.  
We have Staci Davenport MD here on visit and plans to be back long term in  less than 2 years from now.   Vadym Korzhos surgeon from Ukraine that is to be in Moundou wants to be here for a month or two to get some experience with me before he is on his own.   We visited him in Ukraine when we were there last August.   We also have two senior medical students here from Loma Linda Univ .  Tyler and Melissa Pender.   She is interested in internal medicine and infectious disease and he in general surgery.  Another doctor Sarah will be visiting here in May and hopefully will come back long term maybe about the  time we leave PR.  
Our emails are drbland42@gmail.com and dfbland01@gmail.com
Love ,   Dolores and Rollin
Rollin and  Dolores Bland 
Hopital Adventiste de Bere
Boite Postal 52
Kelo, Tandjile,  Chad,  Afrique
Blog  www.weareamissionarybland.blogspot.com  

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