And the Countdown begins!

Hi friends!

I've been enjoying a few days of a well deserved vacation. The weather is beautiful (it's summer here!) and Watson (the kitty) and I have been lounging around, reading books for fun, taking care of the garden I created on my balcony and hanging out with friends. Today I got to eat the first 2 homegrown strawberries!!

However, this is all about to change very soon. In 6 days I will be on a plane, flying over the Atlantic and heading first to Paris. I have to stop there in order to request my visa for Chad, as there is no embassy here. I also get to see my friend Nadya for a couple of days, and that's a nice bonus.

Then I fly to Athens, and take a train to Oinofyta, a sea-side town in Greece, where I will be volunteering for 2 weeks at a Refugee Camp. This is with an organization called Adventist Help, and I have a few friends who have volunteered with them in the past and told me some incredible stories. Since the beginning of the refugee crisis, I wanted to do something to help, and when I heard their stories and the opportunity to help, I had to do it. I can't think of a better way to spend Christmas then helping people who really need it.

After Greece I fly to Chad. I can't wait to get there!! I have just now finished my 2nd year of medical school, so besides our rural family med clinic (where I started going once a week last year and continued this year), I don't get much patient contact. I definitely don't get any OR time, and I desperately miss the OR!! So it'll be a nice change, to be in the OR all day, every day again. :)

Stay tuned and check the blog periodically (or subscribe!) so you can keep up-to-date with my latest adventures. Also, if you're the praying kind, please pray for my trip, and for every patient I will come in contact with.

Thanks for your support! 

Chad - Round 3

The last time I went to Chad, in January this year (not even a year ago!) I thought it would be my last time. The day I left, I remember watching the city of Moundou going by the window of the bus, and feeling sad that I would probably never see it again. It was weird, because part of me felt like Chad was home. It had won a little piece of my heart.

Well, it turns out that *I am* going back!! Dr. Scott is no longer there, he moved to a different hospital in Sierra Leone. But the Bere Hospital has some great doctors, whom I met for a weekend, and they were happy to have me come and volunteer with them. So I bought tickets!

This is a bigger hospital at a very rural area. Some people travel for days to get there and receive medical care. The work they're doing there, against all odds and against all reason, is incredible. I can't wait to become a part of the team, to help anyway I can, and to learn as much as possible.

To make my trip possible, I have started a crowdfunding page. For those of you who want to and are able to help financially, every dollar counts and it will be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, every prayer,word of encouragement and positive thought is also very valued and much needed!

Watch the blog for more stories from med school and from the upcoming trip. Oh, yeah! And here's the link for my page, feel free to share it and help spread the word!!

https://www.gofundme.com/medical-volunteer-trip-to-africa-2v983vnw

Fractures

The most wide spread form of locomotion here is the motorbike. You're either walking and trying not to get hit by a motorbike, or you're on a bike trying to avoid the people and goats everywhere. There are some cars, but they are by far the minority. 

People also like to climb trees to get fruit. And they also seem to fall off trees and break limbs, quite frequently. 

The result of those two facts, is a steady stream of fractures that trickle into the hospital every day. 

They're also not simple fractures, set, cast, go. No sir! They're compound, spiral fractures, some open fractures, most old and already infected. Today someone came and asked me if there was anything we could do about his limping. I asked him when did it start and he said 8 years ago, after he had broken his leg. Clearly it healed wrong, and 8 years later, there's absolutely nothing we can do about it... 

The other day I mentioned I got to scrub in on a patela fracture reconstruction. This was a big, strong man, and he actually fell off a moving bus with his knee into the asphalt. It broke his patela in 3 places and kinda looked like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to put the pieces together. 

Then I also got to see a sign-nail intra-medular tibia repair, and that was incredible! 

I never thought ortho would be so interesting, but we really get lots of broken bones here. 

Anyway, the last few days have been a blur of surgeries and patients, also doing mobilization and getting patients out of bed and walking. 

Sorry if this was a somewhat boring post, but I have to get some rest... After 10 days, it seems my stomach finally lost the fight and I've been on rehydration solution and toast all day. Oh well... part of life, I guess! 

(I got tested, it is NOT malaria! Woohoo!!!) 

Little black children and big nasara people

To say there are cultural differences between Chad and everywhere else I have ever lived is a gross understatement. 

One of the things I learned on my first afternoon here was that most children are TERRIFIED of white people. The parents tell them that if they're bad, the white people will come get them and drink their blood... so they see us coming and literally start screaming. 

This was sad for me, because I love kids, and usually, kids love me too. 

When they start getting older, they start losing fear, probably because they realize we're not really going to drink their blood. 

Anyway, so there's this boy, who is about 10 or 11. The first day I saw him, he looked at me with big, scared eyes, answered my questions with yes or no, and seemed anxious for me to leave. He had a femur fracture as you can clearly see in the x-ray below: 

On Sunday, I asked his name, and he told me: Taira. 

Monday morning comes along, I walked into the room, looked at him and said "Bonjour Taira!" and man, oh man! His face lit up like a Christmas tree. He smiled so big, I almost cried. So I went and talked to him, then his mom came and talked to me too, and asked me questions about his operation, which would be on Tuesday. 

Yesterday I got to spend the entire day in the OR. Dr. Scott plated and fixed his femur, and it looked amazing!! 

However, like I mentioned earlier, the patients are awake during surgery. There's a drape covering the surgical area, but they can still see the Anesthetist moving around, injecting things into their arms, etc. They can also hear everything we say. The kid was terrified. He was shaking with fear... So I went there and started talking to him, held his hand, told him it would be ok, just tried to calm him down...

He now knows my name, smiles everytime I'm around, and his mom also really likes me. He has two younger sisters, and although they're still keeping a safe distance, they have started to smile as well. I will still win them over! :)

Yesterday was a great day... I will share more stories and photos later... :) now it's time for bed! 

P.S.: For those of you who were wondering, my amputee lady is still alive. She developped a fever last night, so we started her on malaria treatment (they all have it, as they don't have mosquito nets or repellent) and she was better this morning. Her wound is still infected, but we're keeping the abcess open and it actually looks ok... 

Please keep her, Taira and all the other patients in your prayers... And again, if you can help, please do!!! http://www.ahiglobal.org/main/donate-now/

(Don't forget to specify that it's for "Centre Chirurgical de Moundou, Chad).

Strangest shopping trip ever...

Hi everybody,

I didn't post in the last few days, but if you're following me on twitter, you know that I've been enjoying a wonderful few days in Paris. What a contrast it will be when I get to Chad!!

Yesterday I went to the Embassy of Chad to request a visa, and lo and behold, they were closed! It was their independence day. Not very cool, because they say it takes 3 days to get the visa. My flight is on Thursday at 4pm...

So I went back today, and they said no problem, it would be done Thursday morning. I'm gonna trust them and hope for the best...

After the embassy, with the assurance of the visa, I went on the weirdest shopping trip ever. I had searched online to find a store that sold medical supplies. It's in the outskirts of Paris, "la banlieu" if you know the region. I got there and started grabbing boxes of latex gloves, bottles of hand-sanitizer, seringes, needles, gauze packages, surgical masks, alcohol wipes, desinfectant wipes, and of course, mosquito repellent.

This is the kind of stuff most people never ever get to buy. Even those of us in the medical professions, we (or at least I) just take it for granted, you show up at the hospital, there are gloves, alcohol, needles. Buying this stuff somehow brought it home to me: I'm going to Africa. In 2 days. A place where the simplest medical supplies are scarce at best, and they make do with what they've got.

I think it hasn't quite sinked in yet... but today it's started to...

And the adventure begins...

This is it folks, I'm at the airport, waiting to board my flight to Paris. I think it's actually an African proverb that says "When you travel far, give your soul time to arrive."

It's funny, but my soul is already in Paris. Usually, that proverb is correct and it takes me about a day (sometimes more) to realize I'm actually there. This time, I think my soul never left Berlin, so it just floated over to Paris and is sitting in a café sur les Champs Elysées, having an espresso and a croissant, waiting for my body to catch up. :)

I already have a little list of the things I want to do when I get to Paris. I have the entire weekend free, and only have to go to the Embassy of Chad on Monday morning. Then it's wait for the visa, and fly to N'djamena on Thursday. This means that in exactly one week, I will be in Chad.

I'm excited!!!

I travel a lot, and have been to places with strong cultures, completely different than my own. I've been to Thailand, and India, and Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan. They were all wonderful experiences, and I enjoyed and learned a lot from them. But this is different. First, this isn't tourism. I'm not going to travel around in Chad. I will be living there for 2 months. I will be treating people, and trying to help them. I will be living the way they do, without proper running water, electricity, or basic sanitation. And I think, for the first time ever, I will be in a place where there's an actual risk to my healh, well-being and life. Chad is surrounded by countries in violent civil wars (Cameroon, Libya, Sudan, Central African Republic). Chad itself is being flooded by refugees, mostly from Darfour. The chances of me contracting malaria and being very sick for at least a few days is very high (prophylaxis, DEET and mosquito-nets can only do so much... it's monsoon season).

However, all of those things don't worry me ver much. It's an adventure, of course, but I'm sure I will probably be ok, health-wise. What worries me is the emotional toll of seeing people dying left, right and center, and not being able to do very much to help them. I guess we'll see.....

But there's no turning back now! Africa in exactly ONE WEEK!!!!!   :) :) :)

Preparations...

If you know me at all, you know that I've moved around a lot. I have lived in 7 different countries, in 3 different continents, and we're not even talking about different cities in each country. I have to pack often. But I HATE DOING IT! It is the worst thing in the world for me...

Well, now I have less than 1 week to:
- Pack my entire house (not the furniture, luckily)
- Cancel all services, internet, phone, etc.
- Get all the necessary vaccines and medications to take to Chad
- Take all my things to a storage unit
- Meet with the owner of my apartment to inventory everything (it's their furniture) and give the keys
- Go to the bank with the owner to get my deposit back
- Spend a night in a hotel
- Fly to Paris

This might seem like not such a big deal... It might not seem like a lot. But it's very time consuming... specially the packing part. And the inventory. I would do it in 3 minutes, but the owner is very meticulous and when I got the apartment, it took 2 1/2hrs... this time it will probably take longer. So the part about the inventory and the bank will take all of Wednesday (banks here take forever). This means I have no more than 3 days to pack everything and take it to storage.

But today, when I went to get my vaccines (yellow fever, tetanus booster), the nurse asked where I was going, and when I said Chad, her first question was "hmmm... sorry, but where is that?" And when I showed her on the world map conveniently posted behind her desk, she asked me what I was going to do there. And I realized that very soon, I will get to poke people with sharp objects again. I will be involved in patient care again. I will be seeing blood and guts and everything in-between. It's been 6 months since I saw my last surgery, and you know what? I MISS IT!

So all the packing and drudgery involved in getting me to the Surgical Center of Moundou, Chad? -- it's worth it!!

And that makes all the difference in the world... :)

This is getting real!!!!

I mentioned in the previous post that 3 years ago I decided to bite the bullet and go for medicine. I haven't been just sitting around doing nothing in that time. I have actually worked in a hospital and learned everything I could learn, basically doing the work of a nurse, and asking to see surgeries, following doctors around during rounds, and reading everything I could get my hands on.

I will do a few blog posts in the future with some of the things I got to do while working at a hospital in Berlin, Germany.

But now I have big news:

I just got my letter of invitation and bought my plane tickets to go volunteer in a Surgical Clinic in Moundou, Chad. It's the middle of nowhere in Africa. According to the World Health Organization, Chad has the worst health system in the world. In 2006 they had 0.4 physicians for every 10,000 people. That's INSANE!

Take a look here for more details: http://www.who.int/gho/countries/tcd.pdf?ua=1

Anyway... I will be going in TWO WEEKS to spend 7 weeks there. I will be doing everything from providing basic sanitation talks to assisting in surgeries. No joke! (I guess all those years of living in France and speaking fluent French finally come in handy. :) )

The doctor I will be working with is Dr. Scott Gardner, a doctor born, raised and trained in the US. He has moved to Chad just 7 months ago, so he's relatively new at this post. The doctor who was there before him, was there for almost 10 years...

I am **very** excited.... but I would be lying if I said I wasn't also terrified. There's so much death, so much misery, so much suffering, and so little that we (or anyone) can do. The resources are non-existent. There's a very urgent need for everything, from basic meds like Ibuprofen all the way to chemotherapy drugs to treat Burkitt's Lymphoma at $100 dollars per gram!

If you read this and Dr. Gardner's blog, and your heart is touched and you would like to donate anything at all, money, time, resources, drugs, please let us know. You can contact Dr. Gardner directly through the blog posted above (the entry about Burkitt's Lymphoma).

And if you're the praying kind, please pray for them and all the work they're doing, and for me, as I embark in this incredible adventure. I'm not ready. But then again, I don't think you can be ready for this...