On the road again...

I haven't quite sorted through all of my papers and everything from Ethiopia, but tomorrow I am headed to Haiti again.  This will be my 6th trip to Haiti since the earthquake.  This trip is with the LEAP Foundation; this will be my 4th trip to Haiti with them.  We will be working at Hopital Espoir doing plastic surgery (primarily cleft lip and palate) and pediatric ENT and urology.  Hopefully I will have internet access and can keep this updated.

Home Sweet Home

There's no place like home!

Friday April 11

April 11, 2014

It is Friday afternoon and our week is almost finished.  As usual, it is hard to believe that the week is over so fast.  It was a busy week, tougher than many previous trips for many reasons.  There are many things that were harder – customs in particular.  The roads are quite congested because of massive amounts of construction around the city; the phone network often didn’t work.

We took care of many patients, however, and did lots of education and made lots of connections.  We saw old friends and made new ones.  In all, our ENT team performed 16 major operations, and the anesthesia team provided anesthesia for these as well as 26 ortho cases and 8 at another government hospital.  We saw over 115 patients in the clinics and some patients in the hallways of the hospital and the hotel.  Our audiology team did about 100 evaluations including for all of the children at the school for the deaf.

We met with anesthesia residents, ENT residents, and anesthesia students.  We gave lectures, visited other hospitals and met with many people in the country who are trying to improve the care.  Most of the team went to the famous Fistula hospital in Addis this afternoon to see the amazing work they are doing there with women who suffer from complications of prolonged labor.  Although this problem is largely unheard of in the US, it is prevalent and devastating throughout the developing world.

Many of us leave tonight, some tomorrow morning, others tomorrow evening.

We will all sleep well on the plane!  We are already planning out next two trips.

Ethiopia April 10

Photos Tuesday and Wendnesday

Wednesday

It has been a crazy few days here.  You would think that by our 10^th trip to Ethiopia everything would be old hat.  Not so. 

We have had a busy few days.  Tuesday we did OR and clinic at Cure.  Wednesday we had OR at Cure and our audiology team went to the Makanessa School for the Deaf where we see all of the students and evaluate their hearing.  We had 4 ENT surgical cases today and 4 orthopaedic cases, and that took all day. 

On Tuesday afternoon our two anesthesia residents and CRNA had a tour of Black Lion Hospital with one of the Ethiopian anesthesia residents.  Today the two anesthesia residents went to see a local government hospital.  It was an eye opening experience to say the last.  We readily take so much for granted in the US.

Most of our team had dinner at our favorite local Korean restaurant tonight.

But most importantly, after the President of Healing the Children spent the last three days at the Addis Ababa airport, we finally got our four bags out of customs today!!!!!!!

Dr. Glenn and I have been meeting with lots of people who want us to provide services to them.  We are constantly trying to figure out the best way to do so.  It is a difficult thing to figure out.  It seems to work best when we can find a way to help Ethiopians get what they need, but it isn’t always an easy thing to accomplish.

Time for bed.  

Yay!!!

We finally got our bags tonight!!!!!!!!