Long Live The Sar

I spent yesterday (Wednesday) at Black Lion Hospital, attending the resident's morning report and a guest lecture by an ENT physician from Phoenix, Arizona. The purpose of his talk was to introduce a neonatal hearing screening program that is being started at Black Lion and to explain its importance. The doctor donated a machine that detects otoacoustic emissions from the inner ear that are absent in people with hearing loss. (For extra credit: Does anyone have any theories as to why such a phenomenon even exists? It seems counterintuitive for the ear to produce its own sound). In the US, children who are identified with hearing loss are enrolled in early intervention programs that educate the parents in various forms of communication, such as sign language, beginning at six months; many children who experience this early intervention end up in normal school classrooms and communicate at a level on par with their normal-hearing peers. In the US, children with very severe hearing l...

Friday and Saturday were spent with Rick seeing patients at the Mission. As usual, the days were jam-packed and went from 9:30-4, without any breaks. I still can't figure out how Rick survives most days without eating or drinking. The majority of patients were spine or heart patients, but it is extremely exciting to hear a heart murmur and be able to say something other than "yeah, hmmm, it sounds like water rushing through a pipe." Among the more interesting cases, there is a patient with potential Wilson's disease, a child with Madura head, and a child with Windswept Syndrome. Crazy, crazy stuff. It's odd how normal it seems to see a patient with TB of the spine with a shape like a > or worse. I have been spending a lot of time with Rick's boys, which has been a total blast. They are the warmest, kindest, most fun group of teenagers I have hung out with since the 10th grade. Semegnew, Dejene, and Mesfin are all home for the summer and we have sp...