Outreach Surgery

Friday, June 18th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer House

Today is outreach surgery day for Dr. Wanye, meaning we had to take about a 30 minute drive over to a university medical research building and observe surgeries. There were quite a bit more individuals with bilateral mature cataracts (aka totally blind), so it was nice to see Dr. Wanye essentially restore sight to about 15 individuals. The room was extremely hot though, and I have no idea how the Dr. could survive in those conditions. My sweat was running down my face (which was covered by the surgical face mask) 10 minutes after entering the operating theater. One especially interesting case was an individual who had a HUGE mass growing on her throat. Dr. Wanye said that this condition can arise when one doesn’t have enough iodine intake, resulting in increased inflammation of the throat area.

We also finished typing the last of the ID cards into Microsoft Excel for record keeping by the Unite for Organization. Thus, everyone brought their laptops, including me. The nurses provided both the staff and us volunteers with both a snack (alvaro pear and a biscuit) as well as a late lunch of fried plantains and red red (Ghana-style beans) and of course… chicken. If I didn’t emphasize this before, I guess now’s the time: I have had chicken for essentially every dinner here in my stay at Tamale. It’s the cheapest meat of course, but sometimes, it just gets over the top. We ended at around 7 PM, so it was already pitch black.

I went to Mariam Hotel one last time to check up on any last minute emails before I leave. The internet wasn’t working after about 30 minutes. So I just gave up and headed home.