Hello to our friends and family around the world. The weeks seem to be floating by a bit faster and Peter has been asking me if I was going to sit down at the computer and compose a blog entry and I was thinking I didn't have much to tell for this week. But maybe there were some notables here and there.
So, on the work front we've had some changes. After over 30 days of wandering around the hospital, horning in on Peter's workspace and letting people know I "didn't really have a job" my local boss finally admitted what I'd been saying for these past four weeks in that she really had no work for me to do. What? You might be wondering - There are patients lining up outside the hospital, patients nearly two to a bed and there's nothing for me to do? Kind of....
My official title on my name tag is: "Assistant Screening Coordinator". Sounds like a job. Doesn't sound too "doctorly" but sounds like there's something I'm supposed to do. Apparently in long term planning Mercy Ships is looking to send teams out into the hinterlands of the country to screen the patients prior to sending them to the ship in addition to the all day long, huge screening that they do at the beginning of a field service. Since this service is only 5 months long and piggy-backs onto the previous trip here in 2010 there's litte need to go out and find more patients since we have more than we can handle. So - no trips to the bush...no need for a screening doc. Told ya so.
Peter and his compadre Dr. Fiona share the ward duties and the ward admissions and they were happy to have me tag along and share the load as well as consult with each other so we were all on the same page. Apparently our exhuberance and Peter's and my reparte' was a bit much for the nurses so like elementary school teachers I think they wanted to send us to some separate corners...or something like that.
On Thursday my boss admitted that there was no work for me to do in screenings and would I be interested in working with the uber busy eye team? It seems they were having some key people leaving to go home and needed some clinical person to sort of herd the rest of the team in their efforts to find patients as well as take care of patients post op. Although I am somewhat ignorant regarding diseases and examination of the eye, having nothing else to do with my remaining 4 months here I said "Sure!"
So - now I'm on the eye team. I've had a half of a day with them thus far so I've not got much to tell regarding how they work or what I'll be doing but I'm figuring I'll be busy since they typically do 40+ surgeries per day. Yes, no typo - that was 40, 4-0, I'll even spell it out....FOURTY or more per day. That's what I get for grousing about having not enough to do. So - if I don't blog again until I get on the plane back home in June you all know the reason why.
The other reason could be I've just got too much empathy. Hard to believe but yes, less that 24 hours after joining the eye team I got an eye infection. Nothing too fancy - just some pink eye but I thought it a little weird so I'm getting a double dose of empathy every four hours as I attempt to hit my eye with some antibiotic drops from an itty bitty dropper.
Just glad I didn't start operating on those goiters or the giant hernias is all I'm saying....
The other fun thing that happened this past week was also a personal medical thing. I got a rash and started throwing up. OK -sorry, TMI (To much information for you non-text or twitter junkies). When I first got the non-itchy rash all over my arms and back I asked Peter, the internist if this might be a drug rash from the doxycycline I'd been taking everyday to ward off Malaria? He assured me it wasn't so I began to lament the lack of my favorite non-toxic laundry detergent left behind in California figuring that to be the cause. A week later as the rash was spreading my GI tract joined the party by letting me know that this pill was no longer welcome, so Good-bye! When I let the live-in doc know this latest development all of a sudden the rash was "classic" drug reaction and I must never take the drug again. I'm still shaking my head about this.
For those of you that are not Infectious Disease physicians I'll let you know there are only three drugs on the market to prevent malaria from the wonderful mosquitos here that think sunset is an invitation to an epidermal smorgasboard. I was now deemed allergic to one of the meds, the second is too expensive to carry on board and only the well heeled, short term crew buy enough to bring to the ship with them. The third drug is all that is left to me now. Down side is that a not uncommon side effect is bizarre, vivid, disturbing nightmares. Lovely.
So far I've not encountered any Steven King episodes at night but for the first four days after my first dose of this once per week medication I discovered that insomnia is also a side effect. Indeed, after four days of two or three hours of sleep per night even Peter wasn't happy he diagnosed my drug rash. We have a few things to try to lessen the side effects so hopefully next week I'll be better rested and a bit more cheery about things in general.
We did get off the boat a bit over the past few weeks. Peter traded call this weekend so we went into town to the craft market again and he bought a shirt. He also went to a going away party for the current crew physician as the new guy showed up Friday night. He also went to a German church service at the German Seaman's mission this morning. I begged off of both since I'm trying to catch up on my lost sleep so I don't have much to share about those adventures.
We've no pictures to share this week since we've neither gone anywhere new nor have we done anything noteworthy enough for the ship's photographers to catch us in the act, I guess. So, there's news from the frontlines but nothing too terribly interesting it seems. We are working on our British accents since we think that our sweet Fiona sounds infinitely more educated than we do and since there's no TV to watch pointing out the differences in how we say things passes for entertainment here. You say potato, I say po-TAH-to sort of thing. Cheerio...
Thanks so much to those of you that have sent us notes of encouragement and especially to our sons who both dutifully called us yesterday. We are most grateful.
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