Around here WE are the foreigners

There are so many interesting things that occur here day in and day out. Although you readers cannot smell what we smell, hear what we hear, feel what we feel, and taste what we taste, hopefully you are able to gain a sense of our experience by at least being able to see our photos.

Like take the market yesterday for example. We stopped by the post office and I walked down the street to get a new phone card. I ran right into this meat stall.

 There was a little boy right next to these heads, ringing out pieces of meat and placing them on a grill of hot coals. As a vegetarian, I was aghast. Lol.

                                                           A seamstress and her shop

A shoe store

                                                                        A 3 day old goat

Today was an especially hot day at work. The electricity was gone most of the day, which left us sweating profusely, smelling all sorts of unpleasant things, (including ourselves) and we were just wiped out due to dehydration. Hard to pay attention when you are so doggone HOT and sweaty!

                                               
We were so short of fresh air and energy that we had to find other ways to amuse ourselves...

We did see one very cool thing though. I know I said I would refrain from posting too much medical stuff, for those who aren't interested or get grossed out by those topics. But I have to share what we saw. We were rounding when we saw a young boy who was on oxygen, in severe respiratory distress, was tripoding (leaning forward to breathe), and had ascites (big belly full of fluid). Dr. Condurache, our attending, is a trained cardiologist from back in Romania, so she was able to put the ultrasound machine on him and we saw a HUGE collection of pericardial fluid around his heart--no wonder he couldn't breathe! What was so cool was that she worked with Dr. Rogers (pediatric surgeon and brother of her husband Dr. Rogers) to physically go in and get the fluid off his chest. It was refreshing to see someone get better before your very eyes. One of the frustrating things here has been seeing and knowing exactly what a patient needs, but seeing it go on for days with no action taken. But this, this was amazing...

For a pediatric patient, 100-200mL of fluid is considered significant. On this boy Dr Rogers pulled off 1180mL of fluid from his pericardium! And he still had plenty more that will need diuretics! That night he slept leaned back in his bed, which he has not been able to do for months. I love medicine.

On to more interesting topics---food!

                                                                            Plantains-mmmm!
                                               
                                                                       

 Red-Red...red beans and red oil with red plantains- comes with rice....one of Jonathan and my faves!

Our dinner with the attendings the last night they were in town, plus some important folks from the hospital

                                                         
                                                     Learning how to do laundry...

                                                                          Chef Aziz

                                                                        Chef (poser) Jonathan
                                                                                     :)

                                               Some people won't get off their soap box!