We had 3 cases planned for today, but Gbozee informed us this morning that a woman scheduled for thyroid surgery was anemic and had other problems, so that her surgery is postponed while we work up her anemia etc. That left us with a neck mass which Sandeep and I did, and a huge knee mass which Greg and Cassell did with Jonathan supervising.
Equipment issues continue to pose a major stumbling block. Video endoscopes used for looking top down into the stomach or bottom up as in colonoscopy require a process to convert the video signal coming from the scope into something intelligible on a TV screen. We had 2 Fuji processors for our scopes which died a while ago; part of the container shipment from Santiago and myself last February was new scopes and a new processor donated by Fuji. The container didn't arrive in time for our March visit because of a dock strike in Spain, but it did arrive eventually. So we unpacked it yesterday, and found that we need the cables from the older processors to make it functional. Unfortunately the older processors and their cables have disappeared. We have multiple people looking for them, but so far no luck. It will be quite disappointing for our patients as well if we can't perform an colonoscopies on this trip.
Throughout the day today potential patients were being brought to the 4th floor for me so decide if their particular condition could be appropriately treated through surgery. it was a crazy experience, but we saw a lot of people whose lives can be improved by a surgical procedure, I think we pretty much filled out our dance card for the next several days of week. Fortunately we had Gbozee and Cassell to help us; I found Gbozee was particularly helpful in translating my English into Liberian English which the patient could understand !! Similarly he was very useful in translating the patient's stories for me !!
Another nice and fun dinner tonight, and now Im off to sleep.
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