Thursday and Friday May 15

Thursday May 14 and Friday May 15 I failed to write yesterday, so this one will be a double. Yesterday was a national holiday, Unity Day, though unfortunately I have no idea what Unity refers to since the holiday goes way way back in history. In any case, we went to the hospital where Santiago spent most of the day teaching Precillar and other personnel about the endoscopy equipment. By the end of the day he was feeling pretty confident that they understood how to take care of it. We discovered that the system needs a power conditioner, which prevents spikes in voltage; the spikes do a job on delicate instruments and blow out expensive light bulbs quite readily. Fortunately they had a large power conditioner in the room used for endoscopic ventriculostomies, so Santiago moved the scope tower etc into that room. The training seemed to go very well, and at the end he was confident that the endoscopy equipment is in good hands. When we were done there, we went for lunch at Sajj, and then back to the apartment for a nap. Last night we had dinner at Taj, and then packed up to leave in the am. Today we were up early to get to JFK and say our goodbyes to the Operating Theater staff, the surgical faculty, Dr. Johnson, etc. Robert Dolo picked us up at 9:30, and we went to see the new Eye clinic he is building, the current clinic he is using, and a school which my friend Karen raised money to build. Robert is a Liberian who trained as an ophthalmic technician, and then went to Ghana for a year to learn cataract surgery. Karen met him there, and he told her of his dream to build an eye clinic in Liberia; she helped make his dream come true by speaking to nearly every Rotary Club in CT in addition to many other people. He has built up his clinic so that he offers exams, same day cataract surgery, and an optical shop to make glasses. There aren't many other places in Liberia where people can get glasses made, so this is a very important service. In his new clinic being built, he will offer all of the above, plus he will have a dental clinic there: teeth and eyes in one shop ! In addition to all of the above, he and his staff go out into the country to do outreach programs, and operate on cataracts. It may seem odd that a non-MD is doing cataract surgery, but he is appropriately selective about the patients he operates on, and an ophthalmologist from the U.S. has vetted his work and found it quite good. The school we visited was the New Life Christian Academy, and it was very sweet. At each classroom we visited, the students stood up and said in unison:" Welcome visitors. Thank you for coming to our school"! One couldn't help but smile, and recall that these students missed most of the year since all schools were closed due to Ebola from September till early April. Upon our return to JFK, we met with Munah to discuss our trip, and some of the things that need to be done to keep the endoscopy unit functional. She called Dr. McDonald in Indiana so that we could say goodbye, and discuss our visit. Then Masmina came and we had a good discussion about HEARTT etc. Now we are at the airport waiting for our plane, which we have just learned is at least 3 hours late, so we are in the airport bar with Michelle having a free beer courtesy of Brussels Airlines !!