Ghanaian church, babies + graphic pictures

The last couple of days have been good. On Sunday after rounds we went to a Ghanaian church in a village a couple of miles down the road. We drove in the back of a pickup truck, which was fun on the bumpy roads, except Jim (A&E doc who arrived on the w/e) kept reminding us to hold tight since there are no neurosurgeons in Ghana! The service was pretty good, except I spent half of it feeling like I was about to puke – I don’t think my malaria tablet enjoyed the ride (I’m going to take them at night cos they make me nauseous). Ghanaian church is definitely something I’d recommend experiencing – it seemed more like a rave than a church with everyone singing and dancing. I took a photo, but it doesn’t really show up very well (tried uploading, but failed like 4 times - really not worth it).

After the service we played with some of the local kids. I’d brought some bubbles and stickers, which was a total novelty for them. They all wanted the stickers on their foreheads for some reason. As soon as I got them out about a hundred kids suddenly appeared from nowhere and shoved their heads in my face. It was super cute until a couple of them started hitting each other for a sticker.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays here are clinic days, while Tuesdays and Thursdays are procedure days. In the middle of clinic yesterday Lynn the OBGYN (I’ve gotten all American :p) came in saying there were two women about to deliver and did I want to go catch some babies. I got to help deliver one baby through a normal vaginal delivery and then suture up another lady’s episiotomy (cut to make the baby hole bigger) after watching her suction delivery, something I’d not seen before. There wasn't quite as much excited as the Royal Baby, but we were all pretty relieved when this little girl was born as the women had had a previous CS, putting her at higher risk, and was failing to progress.

This morning after rounds me and Jim did minor procedures. He’s been really great at teaching me lots and really getting me involved. I’ve probably done more practical stuff here in the last couple of days than I did in all of 4^th year.

Jim, Zato + I debrided this guys leg this morning – it’s this procedure where you scrape off the surface of the wound to help wound healing. He had a snakebite back in May and has developed this massive wound. I’ve seen so many wounds huge wounds here like this, it’s ridiculous. I’m not really sure why they develop like this, a lot of them don’t have a history of any trauma and type 2 diabetes is rare here.

Zato wearing a shoe cover as a hair net + a star (I have no idea how to rotate)

Zato works in theatres. He's the probably most friendly person I've ever met, he's great!

This is our snakebite kid. Most of the snake bits aren't open like this, but there are so many other wounds like this.

Uploading photos here is a bit of a struggle and only about 50% of them work. Martin or anyone else – how do you make the file size smaller? I tried changing it from .JPG to .tiff but that made it bigger…

Anyway I better go – a bunch of us are off to the river to see if we can find some crocodiles!