Up to my elbows in...

It's been a busy few days....so I apologize to my more anxious blog-readers that I have not posted in a while.

Since Sunday when I last wrote, here's what's been going on:

Sunday night Gemma (yes, I have been spelling her name wrong) and Hanna had some of us over to their house for a worship/singing/prayer night which was great, especially since we had most of our Nigerian friends their. Dr. Ameh was trying to teach us a song in Hausa. I have some hysterical video footage of the night that will get posted at a later date.

Monday was clinic day, which had a couple interesting cases come in, with the most striking being a 14-year-old female with a VERY large left breast mass, which is most likely a big fibroadenoma. We're hopefully operating on her before the end of the month. Then I helped Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Apoyar with a parotid case.

Tuesday some of our cases got cancelled again due to missing labs (it doesn't just happen in the states! Anesthesia blocks cases here if the hematocrit is under 30, no matter what), but I did a thyroidectomy with Dr. Gidago (a family med attending who does a bunch of surgery, especially ortho). I then did a lipoma on a staff member's head and finished off the day with a crazy hand case with Dr. Ardill. The kid had a contracture on the dorsum of his hand after a snake bike killed off the soft tissue, so we did a release, tendon repair, and skin graft. Once again, out of my general area of knowlege.

Today was a great day, operatively speaking. Once again I got to do some pediatrics. I helped Dr. Ardill with a cleft lip repair in the morning, then we did a anal pull-through operation on a little girl with Hirschsprung's disease. Her first name is Blessing. You find a lot of people here with names like Blessing, Comfort, Love--I've even heard "Godsaves" as a given name.

We finished the day with an attempt to fix a man with a high-output fistula, which for all of you non-medical types is a connection between the intestine and the skin. It was, in scientific terms, a mess. Part of the problem became apparent, though, when we found a sponge in the abdomen left by his previous surgeon at some other hospital. Yes, these things really do happen.... just not to me. :)

The funniest part of the day was a break I took to go to a drug representative-sponsored presentation with the other residents. It was almost the same as in the states (before regulations against the gifts....): free snacks and a boring presentation on a drug. The only redeeming factor was one of the freebies which was a notebook that on the cover said "Preventing Worms!" and on the back was all kinds of ways to prevent worms. I'm going to carry it all over the US hospitals and see if anyone notices.

I apologize if I've bored any of you with all of the surgical speak--but I'm excited. I'm going to have to get some pictures up here soon.

Tomorrow I'm going to spend all day repairing VVF's--as one dear person who will go unnamed put it, I will be "up to my elbows in vag." Eloquently put.