Saturday March 16

This morning we did our last 2 cases for this trip: Nathan and I excised a rather large ulcerated lesion on a woman's flank, and John and Santiago fixed a hernia to removed lipomas on the same guy. Then we collected our duffel bags, and brought more supplies over here to the OR. After helping to organize them, John and Nathan went to Sajj to pick up pizzas to bring back for everyone. As we were having our pizza party, Keffla, the surgical intern, came up to tell us that the woman I had seen with a large but operable breast cancer had been admitted on Friday night. Somehow that bit of information didn't get passed on, despite our asking the nurses multiple times if she was " on bed". Anyway, she had eaten yesterday, so we opulent do her surgery then....but the OR staff graciously agreed to let us operate tomorrow morning (Sunday) before we leave in the afternoon. We will also do a hernia on the 2 year old son of one of the OR staff; he didn't tell us until late in the trip that it needed to be done, and it looked like it would need to wait till September, but he pushed us and that's fine. We came back to the bungalow to find it being set up for a party, and at 7 many of the OR staff, Dr McDonald, Dr Marshall, Mary, and all of the HEARTT people came over or food, drinks, and dancing with a DJ set up in the living room. Mrs Peabody and her staff did all the arranging, and it was a wonderful evening. Dr McDonald was very kind in her remarks thanking us for our contributions to JFK, and I responded with our thanks for being allowed to be part of the team. John tells me that after our 2 cases in the morning, we will have done a total of 42 operations on this trip. We have definitely had a more complex case mix, and we all feel very good about what we have accomplished.