Wednesday March 6

Today we had a big breakfast brought by Mrs Peabody, the head of dietary at JFK; I guess she is arranging for our meals, and she is doing a wonderful job ! After breakfast we went to the second floor ward to find our patients doing well, and then headed up to the OR. John and I did the first case which was an African hernia in Mr.Hne's uncle. It was huge, but reducible and we did a standard Bassini repair. He did well post-op, due I think in large part to the Marcaine which Dimple brought and which I injected. The next case was a 21 year old woman who had a huge cauliflower like mass on her left thigh. It was large enough that she was wrapping a kerchief around it ! None of us have any idea what it is, so a sample will go back for pathology. Santiago and Nathan and the intern whose name I cannot remember did that one. The last case was a skin graft on a 44 year old man man with a melanoma on his mid foot which had been excised a month ago. It was granulating well, but Dr. Kiiza was convinced that a skin graft was needed, so we did it. As we were leaving, we stopped by the 2nd floor to check on patients for the OR tomorrow. We found a couple and talked about them, and then out of the blue one of the nurses asked John about a young lady with a breast mass. It turned out that I saw her yesterday in clinic, but there is no way for me to know that she had been admitted other than to wander the floors and hope someone say something . That's part of the system problem here. For dinner we went to the Royal, which is all renovated. Very nice ! We are very busy on this trip, which is one reason that my postings are short. Perhaps things will settle down and I will write more later.