It Came from the Abdomen

Matt and Ben made it safely to Kijabe on Friday in good condition ---no confiscations by security or last name misspellings and minimal jet lag. It sounds like they had a great layover in London, complete with a ride on the tube, bangers and mash, and visiting the guards at Buckingham Palace. Matt studied abroad in London in college and enjoyed the return visit. I’ve never been to the UK and really wish we had a layover on the way home. I’ll just have to keep dreaming of fish, chips, and those double decker buses.

I’ve been on call this weekend with two of my favorite interns, Karen and Obonyo, although it hasn’t been too busy…yet. Yesterday we took my patient Immaculate to the theater for an exploratory laparatomy. She was admitted 1 month post partum with vomiting and abdominal pain and swelling after a supposedly normal vaginal delivery. I got to open her abdomen and found a large, loculated cystic mass stuck on the uterus. We drained about 2 L of pus from the abscess and removed some crazy looking debris. Her intestines were encased in her upper abdomen by a weird membrane. We called in the general surgeon to have a look, but he recommended leaving the bowel alone. She got to keep her uterus and hopefully antibiotics will help her continue to recover. Prior to her surgery, we advised her to round up some blood donors since she was anemic. (If you need blood in Kijabe, you need to BYOD- bring your own donors.) It is a struggle for most people to find one or two blood donors. Immaculate’s sister said they had a “bus load” of 20 blood donors including 10 who had her blood type. I was touched by her family’s generosity.

I also got to do a c-section for a lady had poor progress of labor. Her baby turned out to be occiput posterior, and the CS went well. It is funny to find random babies under the warmers alone in the delivery room long after the delivery or CS. I got to bring that baby to her mom, and she was really cute with her.

The Rift Valley Academy had their “senior store” yesterday, which is a fundraiser for the senior class trip to Mombasa. They have a big bbq and sell these amazing homemade iced donuts. We also watched one of the students asked a girl to the junior-senior banquet, the RVA version of prom. This girl was directed to run through a line of people collecting roses until she reached the end where the guy was waiting with a pizza that said “BQ?” in peppermints. Very sweet and random…but she said yes!

I also had another amusing trip to the market yesterday. As soon as I approached the market, 4 ladies who had been sitting outside ran in to staff their tables, bringing the total to 9 produce ladies. I had just been to the market the day before and didn’t really want to buy something from everyone. I tried to stall by visiting the craftsman in the back selling curios. (He came to our house once with a bag full of crafts, saying he was a craftsman, and wearing a “Craftsman” hat.) However, the ladies weren’t deterred. I told one lady I needed “the best watermelon.” Instantly, three ladies each grabbed a watermelon and proclaimed it the best. One offered to cut it for me right there and prove it was ripe. It turned out to be a very nice watermelon, and we enjoyed it in a fruit salad at our dinner party with the neighbors last night. The Trotters came over for dessert and brought Aurelie an early birthday cake. We will need to have another party on Thursday for the big 31!