Friday September 13

     I guess there is a reason to check email at 6:30 in the morning; in my case today, in it was an email from Delta saying that our flight tonight has been cancelled. Unfortunately, this seems to happen quite frequently with Delta in Monrovia, leading a number of people to tell me I should fly some other airline. So I called Delta, and we are rebooked on the Air France flight tomorrow night, going through Paris and arriving at 10:30am on Sunday in New York. Spending an extra day here is not terrible, though I was anxious to get home; being able to fly on a better plane with better service than Delta provides might get me to switch for the next trip and thereafter.
     In the OR this morning John and I did a boy with a hernia, and then Diego and Jonathan did a young man with an incarcerated hernia. Following our surgery, John and I went around to see some patients, and then went to XRay to try to understand what has been happening with the batteries. We learned that the equipment requires 30 batteries, and they now have enough and that part of the machine is working; when we were there the computer seemed to have a software glitch, but hopefully that will be corrected shortly.
       While we were in XRay waiting for the engineer who would explain it all to us, a man who was there to get an Xray looked at me and said: " Hey ! I saw you on TV last night !" and then looking at John he said:"And you're the one with the hat !" Apparently they showed 45 minutes of interviews and actual surgery on the show, which was a first for Liberia. And thus we are celebrities in addition to anything else !
       We said goodbye to a few more patients and staff, and then went for lunch at the Maternity Hospital. Jonathan and Tom left after lunch, since they had rescheduled onto Brussels Airlines leaving tonight because it will fly them from Brussels directly to Atlanta tomorrow, making it easier for them to get home to Little Rock. after they left we had a nice long chat with Dr. Marshall, the head of Pediatrics, about pediatric surgery and some of the issues and needs that will be increasingly necessary if more complex surgery is going to be done here. We also talked about the postgraduate training program starting at the end of the month, and John also talked to her about research possibilities in terms of information and privacy protection, since Dr.Marshall is also head of the Institutional Review Board at JFK.
       Tonight we will go to Sajj for a final meal on this trip, and then wait through the day tomorrow to get on our flight.