March 6 2023

     This is the first blog posting for the March 2023 trip. The team includes Dr Gaspar Barreto-Montero, a senior surgical resident at Waterbury Hospital, Dr Paul Fata, a junior resident, Dr Chandra Joshi, an anesthesiologist at the Lahey Hospital in MA who has come with us many times, and Dr Mark Germani a senior anesthesia resident at the Lahey. Dr Santiago Arrufat and Samantha Schoultz APRN who usually come on our March trips, we’re not able to join us this time much to my regret and theirs. Gaspar, Paul, and I left from JFK Airport on Saturday evening and met up with Chandra and Joshi in Brussels; from there we continued on the Monrovia, arriving at 8:30pm on Sunday night. Our ride into Monrovia was the first surprise of this trip: I expected that we would be net by Dixon and his bus, but instead we were directed to 2 SUVs whose drivers said that they would be taking us. We then had a high-speed, siren enhanced, get out of the road cuz we are coming thru ride to the Murex Hotel ! Our friends had pizza waiting for us, and we we quickly off to bed.

Monday morning we arrived at JFK with our 10 duffel bags of supplies to find that the elevators were once again out of service; fortunately there were several strong men pressed into service to bring them to the 4th floor Operating Suite. After Grand Rounds and greeting many friends, out operating day began with Gaspar fixing a hernia with one nod he Liberian trainees while Paul and I repaired bilateral hernias in a 20 year old male. Later on Gaspar and I removed a giant juvenile fibroadenoma from the breast of a 13 year old girl. The final case was a young boy who developed an esophageal structure after drinking lye. He was quite ill, and had been in the ICU. Dr Mabanza tried but after repeated looks and poking, he determined that the esophageal inlet was fused and there was no opening. The child developed difficulty breathing on emerging from anesthesia and then had a cardiac arrest. We attempted to resuscitate him but we were not successful. It was not a good end to our first day.