Long Live The Sar

Yesterday I had two random, fortuitous encounters with street boys.   1) After a morning at the mission, lunch, and a visit with our patient at Black Lion, Katie and I were walking down to Rick's when we encountered a street boy laying in the middle of the sidewalk having trouble breathing and his body wracked by spasms.  One lady was standing by watching but no one had yet stopped to help.  Realizing that he was not having a seizure, I got down and rolled the boy onto his side.  This didn't help his symptoms but at least he wasn't in danger of choking on his own vomit.  By this time a small group had gathered to watch and some of his street boy friends were busy lighting matches, blowing them out, and sticking the still-smoking match under his nose to try and wake him up from his "seizure."  Other people in the crow tried to get the boy to drink some water but when he was unable to swallow Katie and I hailed a cab an...

After yesterday morning, ideally I would have had a relaxing afternoon sitting poolside at the Sheraton sipping on a daquiri with an umbrella in it, but it was not to be.  Stu and I had an all-american lunch of grilled cheese/hamburger, fries, and a coke, and I treated myself to a Snickers bar.  We shot off a quick email to Rick and then headed to the mission where we were set to give a tour to a group of HS students from the states.  It was a good tour and we were led around the compound by one of the workers who took us into the TB/HIV isolation ward, which was my first time up there.   After the tour, Stu and I went next door to pick up Zack and Katie, our friends who work for the Cherokee foundation.  Zack still had work to finish, but Katie joined us for a delicious chemaki and then we went to Addis Ababa University's Yared School of Music senior concert.  On tuesday, Zack and I were having a macchiato when we struck up a conversation with...

Hanouk got his leg amputated yesterday!  Despite his 5-yr survival chance of 55%, at least now he has a fighting chance.  WARNING: If you don't want to hear all the details of the surgery, DO NOT read on. For those of you with strong stomachs, the world of Ethiopian surgery awaits.... Stu and I arrived @ Black Lion hospital at 7:30 yesterday, but of course couldn't find anyone to talk to until 8:30.  At that time, Dr. Biruk's assistant brought us up to Floor 4 - The OR.  We waited outside for an hour until we finally asked a passing doctor and found that Dr. Biruk was already in his first surgery of the day, a "hip angle plating" (basically the patient snapped his femur right below the pelvis and they were putting in a few angled plates and screws to help it grow back together - as Resident Ray calls Orthopaedic Surgery, "glorified construction").  Instead of bothering him right then, Stu and I went to hear a presentation on t...

So I wrote about Hanouk's aggressive cancer and pending amputation two days ago. The post I would have written yesterday would have gone something like this: Hanouk visited Black Lion this morning and his doctor again told him that "bone grafting" is an option as opposed to amputation. I spent 2+ hrs trying to convince him that it is not a real option and that amputation is the only possibility for saving his life but to no avail. The remote ("10-15%") hope of saving his leg is enough for Hanouk to ignore the experts' advice and sign his own death warrant. I am meeting him tomorrow morning @ Black Lion to talk with this Dr. Biruk and show him Rick's letter from the experts. On a side note: Of course as I ran to print out copies of the letter and 50+ pages of uptodate information, the power cut off in all of Sidist Kilo and Piazza. Maybe this was punishment for having 3+ days of electricity in a row? Power came back on an hour later, but too late ...

Two things note have happened in the last two days: 1) Rick emailed and asked me to convince Hanouk , a patient with malignant fibrous mistiocytoma in his left femur, to get his leg amputated. Hanouk's x-rays and biopsy results were sent to experts at Sloane-Kettering, St. Jude's, and MD Anderson, and all agreed amputation asap was necessary. After nearly ninety minutes I was able to convince him that this was the only option, and Dr. Solomon agreed to amputate on this coming Friday (hopefully). There is still time for some hurdles to emerge, but so far so good. Interesting note: Hanouk is currently in a hip cast because of a broken femur he sustained while playing soccer a few months ago, and he was/is convinced that he got the tumor because he played soccer. He believed that because he broke his femur playing soccer, it got infected, and that's what caused the cancer...interesting stuff. Should make for an interesting survey with Stuart, who is about to start his...

Let the epic Awassa saga continue… After we checked out of the hotel, the four of us jumped into a motorcycle/tricycle taxi and went to the bus station.   We caused a shoved match by getting on the wrong bus (it wasn't that driver's turn to take faranjis) but eventually reached Legehar 45 km away (not the 6 km Tesh had told us).   There we met Tesh's sister, neice, and two brothers.   We macchiatoed and then got on a minibus we contracted to drive us to their father's farm.   This is a crucial point of the story – we negotiated to pay them 300 birrh to drive us to the farm (35 minutes on a dirt road), wait for us to visit, and then drive us back to Awassa, NOT Legehar where they picked us up. We drove to the farm, picking up a few passengers on the way but nothing ridiculous.   The countryside was gorgeous but I was surprised by the population density.   Even though we were far in the countryside, we were never out of site of at...